Design and Development of Conjugated Block Copolymers for Use in Photovoltaic Devices

摘要

A novel tertiary nano structured photovoltaic device has been designed and preliminarily examined by recent development of target block copolymers. The unique feature of the device includes a -D(donor)-B(bridge)-A(acceptor)-B(bridge)- type of block copolymer primary structure, where D and A are conjugated donor and acceptor polymer blocks, and B is a non-conjugated and flexible chain, a π orbital stacked and conjugated chain self-assembled and ordered "secondary structure", and a donor/acceptor asymmetric layers sandwiched D/A columnar "tertiary structure". This device is expected to improve photovoltaic power conversion efficiency significantly in comparison to existing organic based donor/acceptor binary photovoltaic devices due to the reduction of "exciton loss", the "carrier loss", as well as the "photon loss" via three-dimensional space and energy level optimizations. Preliminary experimental results revealed better morphology and opto-electronic properties of-DBAB- vs. D/A blends.