Plastic Solar Cells from Nano-Patterned Fullerenes and Semi-Conducting Polymers

Bulk heterojunction plastic solar cells, as a type of organic photovoltaics, have attracted great attention in developing inexpensive renewable energy sources due to their low cost and ease of manufacturing. Recent work in the field has focused on using systems based on fullerene with its derivatives and poly(3-hexylthiophene)(P3HT) because of relatively higher conversion efficiency. By utilizing different methodology from prevailing approaches, e.g., spin coating, we recently fabricated plastics solar cells by nano-patterning fullerence/P3HT via dip-pen nanolithography. Our goal is to obtain a structure that leads to high mobility charge carrier transport with reduced recombination. Here, we would show some of our preliminary results.