@article{YeZhangWarbyetal.2022, author = {Ye, Fangyuan and Zhang, Shuo and Warby, Jonathan and Wu, Jiawei and Gutierrez-Partida, Emilio and Lang, Felix and Shah, Sahil and Saglamkaya, Elifnaz and Sun, Bowen and Zu, Fengshuo and Shoaee, Safa and Wang, Haifeng and Stiller, Burkhard and Neher, Dieter and Zhu, Wei-Hong and Stolterfoht, Martin and Wu, Yongzhen}, title = {Overcoming C-60-induced interfacial recombination in inverted perovskite solar cells by electron-transporting carborane}, series = {Nature Communications}, volume = {13}, journal = {Nature Communications}, number = {1}, publisher = {Nature Publishing Group}, address = {London}, issn = {2041-1723}, doi = {10.1038/s41467-022-34203-x}, pages = {12}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Inverted perovskite solar cells still suffer from significant non-radiative recombination losses at the perovskite surface and across the perovskite/C-60 interface, limiting the future development of perovskite-based single- and multi-junction photovoltaics. Therefore, more effective inter- or transport layers are urgently required. To tackle these recombination losses, we introduce ortho-carborane as an interlayer material that has a spherical molecular structure and a three-dimensional aromaticity. Based on a variety of experimental techniques, we show that ortho-carborane decorated with phenylamino groups effectively passivates the perovskite surface and essentially eliminates the non-radiative recombination loss across the perovskite/C-60 interface with high thermal stability. We further demonstrate the potential of carborane as an electron transport material, facilitating electron extraction while blocking holes from the interface. The resulting inverted perovskite solar cells deliver a power conversion efficiency of over 23\% with a low non-radiative voltage loss of 110mV, and retain >97\% of the initial efficiency after 400h of maximum power point tracking. Overall, the designed carborane based interlayer simultaneously enables passivation, electron-transport and hole-blocking and paves the way toward more efficient and stable perovskite solar cells. Effective transport layers are essential to suppress non-radiative recombination losses. Here, the authors introduce phenylamino-functionalized ortho-carborane as an interfacial layer, and realise inverted perovskite solar cells with efficiency of over 23\% and operational stability of T97=400h.}, language = {en} } @article{YeZhangWarbyetal.2022, author = {Ye, Fangyuan and Zhang, Shuo and Warby, Jonathan and Wu, Jiawei and Gutierrez-Partida, Emilio and Lang, Felix and Shah, Sahil and Saglamkaya, Elifnaz and Sun, Bowen and Zu, Fengshuo and Shoai, Safa and Wang, Haifeng and Stiller, Burkhard and Neher, Dieter and Zhu, Wei-Hong and Stolterfoht, Martin and Wu, Yongzhen}, title = {Overcoming C₆₀-induced interfacial recombination in inverted perovskite solar cells by electron-transporting carborane}, series = {Nature Communications}, volume = {13}, journal = {Nature Communications}, publisher = {Springer Nature}, address = {London}, issn = {2041-1723}, doi = {10.1038/s41467-022-34203-x}, pages = {12}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Inverted perovskite solar cells still suffer from significant non-radiative recombination losses at the perovskite surface and across the perovskite/C₆₀ interface, limiting the future development of perovskite-based single- and multi-junction photovoltaics. Therefore, more effective inter- or transport layers are urgently required. To tackle these recombination losses, we introduce ortho-carborane as an interlayer material that has a spherical molecular structure and a three-dimensional aromaticity. Based on a variety of experimental techniques, we show that ortho-carborane decorated with phenylamino groups effectively passivates the perovskite surface and essentially eliminates the non-radiative recombination loss across the perovskite/C₆₀ interface with high thermal stability. We further demonstrate the potential of carborane as an electron transport material, facilitating electron extraction while blocking holes from the interface. The resulting inverted perovskite solar cells deliver a power conversion efficiency of over 23\% with a low non-radiative voltage loss of 110 mV, and retain >97\% of the initial efficiency after 400 h of maximum power point tracking. Overall, the designed carborane based interlayer simultaneously enables passivation, electron-transport and hole-blocking and paves the way toward more efficient and stable perovskite solar cells.}, language = {en} } @article{PradhanAlbrechtStilleretal.2014, author = {Pradhan, Basudev and Albrecht, Steve and Stiller, Burkhard and Neher, Dieter}, title = {Inverted organic solar cells comprising low-temperature-processed ZnO films}, series = {Applied physics : A, Materials science \& processing}, volume = {115}, journal = {Applied physics : A, Materials science \& processing}, number = {2}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {New York}, issn = {0947-8396}, doi = {10.1007/s00339-014-8373-8}, pages = {365 -- 369}, year = {2014}, abstract = {Inverted organic solar cells are fabricated using low-temperature-annealed ZnO film as an electron transport layer. Uniform ZnO films were prepared by spin coating a diethylzinc (DEZ) precursor solution in air, followed by annealing at 100 A degrees C. Organic solar cells prepared on these ZnO films with a 1:1 P3HT:PCBM blend as the active layer show a high power conversion efficiency of 4.03 \%, which is more than 10 \% higher than the PCE of solar cells comprising ZnO prepared via a high-temperature sol-gel route.}, language = {en} } @article{SchubertDolfenFrischetal.2012, author = {Schubert, Marcel and Dolfen, Daniel and Frisch, Johannes and Roland, Steffen and Steyrleuthner, Robert and Stiller, Burkhard and Chen, Zhihua and Scherf, Ullrich and Koch, Norbert and Facchetti, Antonio and Neher, Dieter}, title = {Influence of aggregation on the performance of All-Polymer Solar Cells containing Low-Bandgap Naphthalenediimide Copolymers}, series = {dvanced energy materials}, volume = {2}, journal = {dvanced energy materials}, number = {3}, publisher = {Wiley-VCH}, address = {Weinheim}, issn = {1614-6832}, doi = {10.1002/aenm.201100601}, pages = {369 -- 380}, year = {2012}, abstract = {The authors present efficient all-polymer solar cells comprising two different low-bandgap naphthalenediimide (NDI)-based copolymers as acceptors and regioregular P3HT as the donor. It is shown that these naphthalene copolymers have a strong tendency to preaggregate in specific organic solvents, and that preaggregation can be completely suppressed when using suitable solvents with large and highly polarizable aromatic cores. Organic solar cells prepared from such nonaggregated polymer solutions show dramatically increased power conversion efficiencies of up to 1.4\%, which is mainly due to a large increase of the short circuit current. In addition, optimized solar cells show remarkable high fill factors of up to 70\%. The analysis of the blend absorbance spectra reveals a surprising anticorrelation between the degree of polymer aggregation in the solid P3HT:NDI copolymer blends and their photovoltaic performance. Scanning near-field optical microscopy (SNOM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) measurements reveal important information on the blend morphology. It is shown that films with high degree of aggregation and low photocurrents exhibit large-scale phase-separation into rather pure donor and acceptor domains. It is proposed that, by suppressing the aggregation of NDI copolymers at the early stage of film formation, the intermixing of the donor and acceptor component is improved, thereby allowing efficient harvesting of photogenerated excitons at the donoracceptor heterojunction.}, language = {en} } @article{YinSchubertStilleretal.2008, author = {Yin, Chunhong and Schubert, Marcel and Stiller, Burkhard and Castellani, Mauro and Neher, Dieter and Kumke, Michael Uwe and H{\"o}rhold, Hans-Heinrich}, title = {Tuning of the excited-state properties and photovoltaic performance in PPV-based polymer blends}, doi = {10.1021/Jp803977k}, year = {2008}, language = {en} } @article{YangJaiserStilleretal.2006, author = {Yang, Xiao Hui and Jaiser, Frank and Stiller, Burkhard and Neher, Dieter and Galbrecht, Frank and Scherf, Ullrich}, title = {Efficient polymer electrophosphoreseent devices with interfacial layers}, series = {Advanced functional materials}, volume = {16}, journal = {Advanced functional materials}, number = {16}, publisher = {Wiley-VCH}, address = {Weinheim}, issn = {1616-301X}, doi = {10.1002/adfm.200500834}, pages = {2156 -- 2162}, year = {2006}, abstract = {It is shown that several polymers can form insoluble interfacial layers on a poly (ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrene sulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) layer after annealing of the double-layer structure. The thickness of the interlayer is dependent on the characteristics of the underlying PEDOT.PSS and the molecular weight of the polymers. It is further shown that the electronic structures of the interlayer polymers have a significant effect on the properties of red-light-emitting polymer-based electrophosphorescent devices. Upon increasing the highest occupied molecular orbital and lowest unoccupied molecular orbital positions, a significant increase in current density and device efficiency is observed. This is attributed to efficient blocking of electrons in combination with direct injection of holes from the interlayer to the phosphorescent dye. Upon proper choice of the interlayer polymer, efficient red, polymer-based electrophosphorescent devices with a peak luminance efficiency of 5.5 cd A(-1) (external quantum efficiency = 6 \%) and a maximum power-conversion efficiency of 5 Im W-1 can be realized.}, language = {en} } @article{HegewaldSchmidtGohsetal.2005, author = {Hegewald, J. and Schmidt, T. and Gohs, U. and Gunther, M. and Reichelt, R. and Stiller, Burkhard and Arndt, K. F.}, title = {Electron beam irradiation of poly(vinyl methyl ether) films : 1. Synthesis and film topography}, issn = {0743-7463}, year = {2005}, abstract = {Temperature-sensitive hydrogel layers on silicon (Si) substrates were synthesized by electron beam irradiation of spin-coated poly(vinyl methyl ether) (PVME) films. The influences of the used solvent, the polymer concentration, and the spinning velocity on the homogeneity and the thickness of the PVME film were investigated. In the range of concentration c(p) = 1-15 wt\% PVME in ethanol solution, homogeneous films with a thickness between d = 50 nm and 1.7 mu m were obtained. The films were cross-linked by electron beam irradiation under inert atmosphere and analyzed by sol-gel- analysis. The results were compared with bulkgels formed by electron beam irradiation of PVME in the dry state. The film topography was analyzed by high-resolution field emission scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy. An islandlike structure in the dry, swollen, and shrunken state of the hydrogel films was observed}, language = {en} } @article{TejedorOriolPinoletal.2005, author = {Tejedor, R. M. and Oriol, L. and Pinol, M. and Serrano, J. L. and Strehmel, Veronika and Stiller, Burkhard and Stumpe, Joachim}, title = {Photoreactive main-chain liquid-crystalline polyesters : Synthesis, characterization, and photochemistry}, issn = {0887-624X}, year = {2005}, abstract = {Three series of semiflexible and rigid main-chain polyesters containing photoreactive mesogenic units derived from p-phenylenediacrylic acid (PDA) and cinnamic acid have been synthesized by high-temperature polycondensation. The thermal and mesomorphic properties of the polymers have been determined. The photochemical behavior of polymer P-[1]-T, which contains a PDA unit, has been studied both in solution and in films. In solution, [2+2] photocycloaddition, E/Z photoisomerization, and photo-Fries rearrangement can take place. In contrast, the dominant process in spin-coated films is the [2+2] photocycloaddition reaction, which causes crosslinking of the polymer. In films, the photochemistry and induction of anisotropy are strongly influenced by the aggregation of the PDA phenylester unit. A dichroism of about 0.2 has been induced in films by irradiation with linearly polarized UV light, and thus the capability of these films to induce optical anisotropy and align liquid crystals has been demonstrated. Liquid-crystalline cells have been made with polarized irradiated films of P[1]-T as aligning layers. A commercial liquid-crystalline mixture has been used for this study, and a similar liquid-crystalline order determined by polarized Fourier transform infrared to a commercial cell with rubbed polyimide as an aligning layer has been detected. Because of crosslinking of the irradiated P[1]-T photoaligning layer, the photoinduced anisotropy is stable at high temperatures, and the liquid-crystalline molecules are insoluble in the irradiated polymer. (c) 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc}, language = {en} } @book{MuzikanteFonavsBrehmeretal.2005, author = {Muzikante, I. and Fonavs, E. and Brehmer, Ludwig and Stiller, Burkhard}, title = {Photoinuced phenomena in corona poled polar organic films}, year = {2005}, abstract = {Organic materials have received considerable attention because of their large dipole moments and optical nonlinearities. The optically induced switching of material properties is important for studying the optoelectronic effects including second harmonic generation. Organic materials for photonic applications contain chromophore dipole which consist of acceptor and donor groups bridged by a delocalized pi-electron system. Both theoretical and experimental data show a reversible highly dipolar photoinduced intra molecular charge transfer in betaine type molecules accompanied by change of the sign and the value of the dipole moment. The arrangement of polar molecules in films is studied both by atom force microscopy and surface potential measurements. To understand the photo response of these materials, their spectroscopic and electrical properties are studied. The morphology and photoinduced surface potential switching of the self-assembled monolayers and polymer films are investigated. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved}, language = {en} } @article{DimitrievSmertenkoStilleretal.2005, author = {Dimitriev, O. P. and Smertenko, P. S. and Stiller, Burkhard and Brehmer, Ludwig}, title = {Polyaniline-transition metal salt complexes: insight into formation mechanisms}, issn = {0379-6779}, year = {2005}, abstract = {Two basic morphologies of emeraldine base of polyaniline-transition metal salt complex films cast from N- methylpyrrolidinone solutions are described. The first morphology consists of grains and the other consists of loose aggregates, respectively. The correlation of the film morphology with formation of precipitate in the complex solution, kinetics of solvent evaporation from the cast film, amount of solvent entrapped in the film, film conductivity, and IR absorption spectra is shown. Two different mechanisms of the complex formation as a result of competition in the polymer- inorganic salt-solvent trio interactions are discussed; the first mechanism results in folding of macromolecules into compact coils being then a core of grains in the complex films, and the second mechanism leads to blending of the polymer chains with solvent giving rise to formation of loose aggregates. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved}, language = {en} }