Application of Hole-Transporting Materials as the Interlayer in Graphene Oxide/Single-Wall Carbon Nanotube Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells*

LePing Yu; Tom Grace; Hong Duc Pham; Munkhbayar Batmunkh; Mahnaz Dadkhah; Cameron Shearer; Prashant Sonar; Joe Shapter

doi:10.1071/CH17380

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Application of Hole-Transporting Materials as the Interlayer in Graphene Oxide/Single-Wall Carbon Nanotube Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells*

LePing Yu ^A , Tom Grace ^A , Hong Duc Pham ^B , Munkhbayar Batmunkh ^A , Mahnaz Dadkhah ^A , Cameron Shearer ^A , Prashant Sonar ^B and Joe Shapter ^A ^C

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A Centre for Nanoscale Science and Technology, School of Chemical and Physical Sciences, Flinders University, Bedford Park, SA 5042, Australia.

^B School of Chemistry, Physics and Mechanical Engineering, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Qld 4001, Australia.

^C Corresponding author. Email: joe.shapter@flinders.edu.au

Australian Journal of Chemistry 70(11) 1202-1211 https://doi.org/10.1071/CH17380
Submitted: 6 July 2017 Accepted: 9 August 2017 Published: 31 August 2017

Abstract

Solid-state hole-transporting materials, including the traditional poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrene sulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS), and recently developed 4,4′-(naphthalene-2,6-diyl)bis(N,N-bis(4-methoxyphenyl)aniline) (NAP) and (E)-4′,4‴-(ethene-1,2-diyl)bis(N,N-bis(4-methoxyphenyl)-[1″,1‴-biphenyl]-4-amine) (BPV), have been applied as a hole-transporting interlayer (HTL) for graphene oxide/single-walled carbon nanotube–silicon (GOCNT/Si) heterojunction solar cells, forming a GOCNT/HTL/Si architecture. The influence of the thickness of the HTL has been studied. A new AuCl₃ doping process based on bath immersion has been developed and proved to improve the efficiency. With the AuCl₃-doped GOCNT electrodes, the efficiency of GOCNT/PEDOT:PSS/Si, GOCNT/NAP/Si, and GOCNT/BPV/Si devices was improved to 12.05 ± 0.21, 10.57 ± 0.37, and 10.68 ± 0.27 % respectively. This study reveals that the addition of an HTL is able to dramatically minimise recombination at the heterojunction interface.

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