Neutron Radiation Damage Testing of Organic Solar Cells

Giuseppe Maria Paternò^a, Andrea Zampetti^a, Valentina Robbiano^a, Keith Fraser^a, Franco Cacialli^a, Victoria Garcia Sakai^b

^aUniversity College London UCL, Torrington Place, United Kingdom

^bISIS Pulsed Neutron and Muon Source, Science and Technology Facilities Council, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, Didcot OX11 0QX, United Kingdom

International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics
Proceedings of International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics 2015 (HOPV15)

Roma, Italy, 2015 May 11th - 13th

Organizer: Filippo De Angelis

Poster, Giuseppe Maria Paternò, 233
Publication date: 5th February 2015

Polymer-based solar cells have recently emerged as a promising class of photovoltaic diodes, with efficiencies approaching 12%¹. Since this class of materials allow fabrication of cheap, lightweight and flexible devices, they might be integrated effectively in spacecrafts and thus reduce the associated launching costs. For all these reasons, a detailed study on the effect of radiation exposure needs to be carried out to investigate whether or not these devices are adequately radiation tolerant. Neutron irradiation is a well-established technique to simulate exposure to cosmic rays. Here we report, for the first time, a study of fast neutron (>10 MeV) radiation tolerance of polymer-fullerene solar cells incorporating either poly(3-hexylthiophene) [P3HT] or poly(2,5-bis(3-hexadecylthiophen-2-yl)thieno[3,2-b]thiophene) [PBTTT] as electron-donors, and [6,6]-Phenyl C₇₁ butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) as the electron-acceptor. We irradiated the devices at three different total-dose of neutrons (1.5, 3 and 4.5 x 10⁹ n / cm²), observing a general lowering of the efficiencies (40% and 11% for P3HT and PBTTT) already at the lower dose and a higher parameters variability from device to device upon irradiation. Interestingly, PBTTT displays a higher radiation tolerance than P3HT, likely due to its superior structural and conformational stability.

1 Heliatek, (http://www.heliatek.com/newscenter/presse, 16/01/2013), Press Release.

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