Effect of Polymer Aggregation on the Open Circuit Voltage in Organic Photovoltaic Cells: Aggregation-Induced Conjugated Polymer Gel and its Application for Preventing Open Circuit Voltage Drop

To investigate the structure-dependent aggregation behavior of conjugated polymers and the effect of aggregation on the device performance of conjugated polymer photovoltaic cells, new conjugated polymers (PVTT and CN-PVTT) having the same regioregularity but different intermolecular packing were prepared and characterized by means of UV-vis spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy (AFM). Photovoltaic devices were prepared with these polymers under different polymer-aggregate conditions. Polymer aggregation induced by thermal annealing increases the short circuit current but provides no advantage in the overall power conversion efficiency because of a decrease in the open circuit voltage. The device fabricated from a pre-aggregated polymer suspension, acquired from ultrasonic agitation of a conjugated polymer gel, showed enhanced performance because of better phase separation and reduced recombination between polymer/PCBM.