Date of Award

2015

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Natural Sciences

First Advisor

Scudder, Paul

Keywords

Fullerene Derivatives, Organic Photovoltaics, Chemistry

Area of Concentration

Chemistry

Abstract

A biphenyl-4-octane activated fullerene, biphenyl-4-C61-heptane (B4CS), as well as phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM), was synthesized using the sulfonium ylide route used by Takatoshi et al.22 B4CS was synthesized in order to observe possible solar cell efficiency changes, resulting from bulk heterojunction (BHJ) morphological differences, caused by changing the activating group attached to C60 fullerene. The two activated fullerenes had similar UV-Vis spectra, suggest similar electrical properties. The two activated fullerenes were then fabricated into photovoltaic cells with the architectures: ITO (indium tin oxide) /PEDOT:PSS (poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate) /P3HT (poly(3-hexylthiophene-2,5-diyl)):PCBM/GaIn/ITO and ITO/PEDOT:PSS/P3HT: B4CS /GaIn/ITO. The PCBM based cell had a Voc of 2 mV. The B4CS based cell had a Voc of 0.2 mV. PEDOT:PSS/P3HT:PCBM was found to have similar absorbance in the visible region as PEDOT:PSS/P3HT:B4CS.

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