Utilization of poly (4-styrenesulfonic acid) doped polyaniline as a hole transport layer of organic solar cell for indoor applications

The demand for low dimensional, micro powered and wireless indoor electronic devices has been increasing. To power-up those devices, organic photovoltaic (OPV) cells are being employed. The OPV cells exhibit good spectral matching and mechanical flexibility, and can harvest artificial indoor light energy efficiently. Hole transport layer (HTL) is an important component of an OPV cell. Water stable, low temperature processable poly (3, 4-ethylene dioxythiophene): poly (4-styrenesulfonic acid) (PEDOT:PSS) based HTL is commonly used in the indoor OPV cells. However, strongly acidic, highly hydrophilic and expensive PEDOT:PSS resulted in the development of cheaper, mildly acidic and less humidity sensitive alternative hole transport material (HTM) for the indoor OPV cells. Here, we utilized an economical and low acidic, water-stable PSS doped polyaniline (PANI) as HTM for a poly (3-hexylthiophene): [6, 6]-indene-C60 bisadduct (P3HT:ICBA) active material-based indoor OPV cell. The film formed by chemically synthesized PANI:PSS exhibited over 90% transmittance and approximately 5.15 eV work function value. The OPV device exhibited higher shunt resistance and greater power conversion efficiency (PCE) during the operation in an indoor environment. For 1000 Lux white LED light, the device showed around 10% PCE. Furthermore, the device exhibited better stability than PEDOT:PSS HTL based indoor OPV.