Sheng-Fu Horng

Highly efficient flexible inverted organic solar cells using atomic layer deposited ZnO as electron selective layer

With atomic-layer-deposition grown zinc oxide as the electron selective layer, we developed plastic substrate compatible processing for organic photovoltaic devices and demonstrated flexible inverted organic solar cells on poly(ethylene naphthalate) with a power conversion efficiency of 4.18%.

13% Efficiency Hybrid Organic/Silicon-Nanowire Heterojunction Solar Cell via Interface Engineering

Interface carrier recombination currently hinders the performance of hybrid organic-silicon heterojunction solar cells for high-efficiency low-cost photovoltaics. Here, we introduce an intermediate 1,1-bis[(di-4-tolylamino)phenyl]cyclohexane (TAPC) layer into hybrid heterojunction solar cells based on silicon nanowires (SiNWs) and conjugate polymer poly(3,4-ethylenedioxy-thiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS). The highest power conversion efficiency reaches a record 13.01%, which is largely ascribed to the modified organic surface morphology and suppressed saturation current that boost the open-circuit voltage and fill factor. We show that the insertion of TAPC increases the minority carrier lifetime because of an energy offset at the heterojunction interface. Furthermore, X-ray photoemission spectroscopy reveals that TAPC can effectively block the strong oxidation reaction occurring between PEDOT:PSS and silicon, which improves the device characteristics and assurances for reliability. These learnings point toward future directions for versatile interface engineering techniques for the attainment of highly efficient hybrid photovoltaics.

Multilayer polymer light-emitting diodes by blade coating method

Multilayer polymer light-emitting diodes fabricated by blade coating are presented. Multilayer of polymers can be easily deposited by blade coating on a hot plate. The multilayer structure is confirmed by the total thickness and the cross section view in the scanning electron microscope. The film thickness variation is only 3.3% in 10cm scale and the film roughness is about 0.3nm in the micron scale. The efficiency of single layer poly(para-phenylene vinylene) copolymer Super Yellow and poly(9,9-dioctylfluorene) (PFO, deep blue) devices are 9 and 1.7cd∕A, respectively, by blade coating. The efficiency of the PFO device is raised to 2.9cd∕A with a 2-(4-tert-butylphenyl)-5-(4-biphenylyl)-1,3,4-oxadiazole (PBD) hole-blocking layer and to 2.3cd∕A with a poly[(9,9-dioctylfluorenyl-2,7-diyl)-co-(4,4′-(N-(4-sec-butylphenyl))diphenylamine)] elec-tron-blocking layer added by blade coating.

Unipolar Switching Behaviors of RTO

The microstructure and electrical properties of the WOX -based resistive random access memory are investigated in this letter. The WOX layer is formed by converting the surface of the W plug with a CMOS-compatible rapid thermal oxidation process. The conductive-atomic-force-microscopy result indicates that nanoscale conducting channels exist in the WOX layer and result in a low initial resistance. This letter studies the unipolar operation- the programming, reading, and reliability behaviors of the device are characterized systematically. The low programming voltages for RESET (3.3 V/50 ns) and fast SET speed (3 V/300 ns) are achieved along with cycling endurance greater than 107 times. In addition, the device is immune to read disturb. A 2-bit/cell operation is also demonstrated for high-density applications.

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Picosecond photoresponse of carriers in Si ion‐implanted Si samples has been measured using femtosecond transient reflectivity measurement. A threshold peak implant dose of 1016 cm −2 is required to achieve picosecond carrier lifetime. At this dosage, carrier lifetimes of 0.9 and 1.4 ps are measured for the as‐implanted and 400 °C annealed Si substrates, respectively. The increase in carrier lifetime upon annealing is attributed to the reduction in the concentration of trap and recombination centers. Sheet resistance also shows a strong dependence on the annealing temperature. An eightfold increase in sheet resistance is obtained for annealed samples, and a reduction in hopping conduction, manifested by the e−1/T temperature dependence, may be responsible for the increase in resistance. Further evidence of decreasing hopping conduction can be also observed from the more than two orders of magnitude in reduction of sheet resistance as the peak dosage decreases from 1016 to 1014 cm−2.

RRAM

We perform comprehensive long-time monitoring of the p-doping and de-doping of poly(3-hexyl thiophene) under changing external conditions of oxygen, light, and temperature. They are shown to be controlled by the complex adsorption and desorption process with time scales ranging from seconds to weeks. The oxygen doping at atmospheric pressure takes several hours in the dark. The doping is dramatically accelerated to be within seconds with light of wavelength of 500–700 nm. Even at low oxygen pressure of 10−4 torr doping occurs within minutes with light. The de-doping by oxygen desorption takes as long as weeks at room temperature and vacuum of 10−4 torr, but when the temperature is raised to near the polymer glass temperature of 370 K, the de-doping is accelerated to minutes as the enhanced chain motion releases the trapped oxygen. Even though visible and near infrared light causes very efficient doping within seconds or minutes depending on vacuum level, such light-induced doping is not a chemical reactio...

Picosecond photoresponse of carriers in Si ion‐implanted Si

The microscopic states and performance of organic solar cell are investigated theoretically to explore the effect of the carrier mobility. With Ohmic contacts between the semiconductor and the metal electrodes there are two origins of carriers in the semiconductor: the photocarriers generated by photon absorption and the dark carriers diffused from the electrodes. The power efficiency of the solar cell is limited by the recombination of a carrier with either the photocarrier or a dark carrier. Near the short-circuit condition the photocarrier recombination in the semiconductor bulk decreases as the mobility increases. Near the open-circuit condition the dark carrier recombination increases with the mobility. These two opposite effects balance with one another, resulting in an optimal mobility about 10−2 cm2/V s which gives the highest power conversion efficiency. The balance of the electron and hole mobilities are not necessary to maintain the optimal efficiency also because of the balance of the photocar...

Dynamics and reversibility of oxygen doping and de-doping for conjugated polymer

An intermediate liquid buffer layer is introduced to overcome the dissolution problem of solution-processed multilayer conjugated polymer light-emitting diodes. This method can be applied to arbitrary combinations of polymers with no restriction on solvents. As an example, a hole-blocking layer is successfully spin coated on the common p-type emissive polymer layers. One green- and two blue-emitting polymers are chosen as the emissive layers. The electron-hole balance and efficiency are significantly improved by the addition of hole-blocking layer. The electroluminescence efficiency can be increased up to nine times, while the luminance up to seven times. In particular, 1.5cd∕A is obtained for deep blue emission from poly(9,9-dioctyl-fluorene) with 1,3,5-tris(N-phenylbenzimidazol-2-yl)benzene spin coated as the hole-blocking material.

The effect of carrier mobility in organic solar cells

Wide-range low-voltage continuous color tuning is achieved in multilayer light-emitting diodes based exclusively on the commonly used high-efficiency electroluminescent conjugated polymers. There are three layers for red, green, and blue emission, and one extra layer for electron blocking. The color of the emitted photon depends on the position of the electron-hole recombination. Due to the stronger field dependence of the electron mobility relative to the hole mobility, the recombination zone is pushed away from the cathode and concentrated in different emissive layers as the voltage increases.

General method to solution-process multilayer polymer light-emitting diodes

A metal grid is sandwiched between poly(3-hexylthiophene) to form a solid-state version of vacuum tube triode, where the vertical space-charge-limited current is modulated by the grid potential. The Al grid contains random submicron openings formed by a nonlithographic method. The multilayer polymer structure is made by spin coating. The operating voltage of the polymer space-charge-limited transistor is 3V, and the current gain of 506 is obtained. The characteristics of the transistor can be tuned by the diameters and the density of the openings on the grid. Similar to the vacuum tube triode, the current follows a power law voltage dependence.