The influence of silicon nanocrystal (SiNC) surface characteristics obtained from different functionalization methods on the performance of LEDs was investigated. The surface of SiNCs was functionalized with hexyl chains via hydrosilylation (HS) or with organolithium reagents (OLR) and resulting SiNCs were incorporated as the emissive layer in hybrid organic/inorganic LEDs. Devices utilizing SiNCs functionalized with OLR consistently exhibited lower turn-on voltages, higher luminances and external quantum efficiencies compared to those obtained from the HS method. These improvements were attributed to the less dense and monolayer surface coverage of the SiNCs obtained by the OLR method, as well as their higher absolute quantum yield.

In this paper we report on Indium Tin Oxide (ITO)-free spray coated organic photodiodes with an active layer consisting of a poly(3-hexylthiophen) (P3HT) and [6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) blend and patterned poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) electrodes. External quantum efficiency and current voltage characteristics under illuminated and dark conditions as well as cut-off frequencies for devices with varying active and hole conducting layer thicknesses were measured in order to characterize the fabricated devices. 60% quantum efficiency as well as nearly four orders of magnitude on-off ratios have been achieved. Those values are comparable with standard ITO devices.

Organic solar cells (OSCs) are attractive as an alternative to inorganic devices for their easy fabrication and solution-processability. A major and unsolved problem with bulk heterojunction devices remains the optimization of the network morphology. Here, we discuss the influence of the 1,8-diiodooctane (DIO) solvent additive on the efficiency of OSCs and show that by selectively controlling the crystallization of the organic material, the power conversion efficiency (PCE) can be increased by about 30%. For P3HT:PCBM-based devices, the power conversion efficiency (PCE) was increased from 3.7% to 4.9% for PCPDTBT:P3HT:PCBM-based devices from 3.2% to 4.1%. This improvement is due to the higher I sc , which is in agreement with the higher external quantum efficiency (EQE) observed on the devices fabricated with DIO. We correlate this to an increase of the surface roughness observed with atomic force microscopy (AFM) analysis. We demonstrate that the effect of the DIO additive is equivalent to a high-temperature thermal annealing.

Numerical simulations based on kinetic Monte Carlo (kMC) techniques provide a powerful and versatile tool to gain a deep understanding of nanoscale processes in bulk organic heterojunction (BHJ) solar cells and to guide their optimization. Low-bandgap polymer donor materials count as constituents for novel cells with improved efficiency, mainly because they extend the absorption to the infrared region. We developed a kMC model which is able to accurately reproduce the currentvoltage (JV) characteristics of an organic solar cell consisting of a blend of low-bandgap polymer and fullerene active materials with different active layer thicknesses.