• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2014.02a
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• pp.481.2-481.2
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• 2014

Bulk hetero junction (BHJ) polymer solar cell (PSCs) is one of the most promising fields as alternative energy source. Especially, the development of new p-type conjugated polymer is one of the main issues to get core technology. In this study, we investigated the chemical doping effects of incorporating 3,6-carbazole units into conjugated polymers based on 2,7-carbazole. We assessed the structural effects of this chemical doping by measuring the photovoltaic device performance of the copolymers with and without annealing. Note that the use of nanostructures in the bulk heterojunction layer could be a major obstacle to commercialization because nano-morphologies are frequently unstable at high temperatures. Therefore, the development of thermally stable polymer:fullerene blends with optimized PCEs is an important goal in this area of research. We studied the morphologies of the copolymers incorporating 3,6-carbazole units resulting from thermal annealing to investigate the effects of the difference between the T g values of the 2,7-carbazole unit and the 3,6-carbazole unit.

• Proceedings of the Polymer Society of Korea Conference
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• 2006.10a
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• pp.274-274
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• 2006

Recently, conjugated polymer solar cells have attracted a great deal of attention. In this work, we applied the various scanning probe techniques to characterize composite materials typically used to fabricate polymer solar cells: poly-3(hexylthiophene) (P3HT) and [6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) and P3HT/PCBM/Au nanoparticle (NP) samples. The latter is studied due to the idea of using the gold NP surface plasmon to enhance the optical absorption of the composite films. AFM is used to characterize the film morphology whereas conducting AFM is used to study the charge transport properties at the nanoscale. We found that there is a direct correlation between the nanoscale charge transport measurements and the device efficiencies.

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
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• 2012.05a
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• pp.59.2-59.2
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• 2012

Polymer solar cells utilize bulk heterojunction (BHJ) type photo-active layer in which the electron donating polymer and electron accepting $C_{60}$ derivatives are blended. We found there is significant charge recombination at the interface between the BHJ active layer and electrode. The charge recombination at the interface was effectively reduced by inserting wide band gap inorganic interfacial layer, which resulted in efficiency and stability enhancement of BHJ polymer solar cell.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.33 no.12
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• pp.4093-4097
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• 2012

We introduced a new UV-cured resin polymer gel as an electrolyte for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) that is cured with UV irradiation to form a thin film of UV-cured resin polymer gel in the cells. The gel film was characterized and its potential for use as an electrolyte in DSSCs was investigated. This new UV-cured resin polymer gel was successfully applied as a gel polymer electrolyte in DSSCs overcoming the problems associated with the liquid electrolytes in typical DSSCs. The effect of ${\gamma}$-butylrolactone (GBL) on the long-term stability and photovoltaic performance in DSSCs using this UV-cured resin polymer gel electrolyte was also investigated. The results of the energy conversion efficiency, ionic conductivity and Raman spectra of the UV-cured resin polymer gel electrolyte with the addition of 6 wt % GBL to the UV-cured resin polymer electrolyte showed good long-term stability and photovoltaic performance for the DSSCs with the UV-cured polymer gel electrolyte.

• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.167-171
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• 2007

Currently, the alternative energy is one of the critical issues because of exhaustion of petroleum resources and its high cost. The solar cell is considered as the one of the promising alternative energy. And the solar cell can be classified to inorganic solar cell and organic solar cell. Although the efficiency of organic solar cell is very lower than the that of inorganic solar cell, organic solar cells have many advantages including low process cost, high transmittance, color variation, and flexibility. For these reasons, organic solar cells have the potential in low cost solar cell market that is challenging for inorganic solar cells. Recent researches of organic solar cell is concentrating on enhancement of efficiency, lifetime, and stability to order to commercially use. Working principles and the development issues of organic solar cells are discussed in this paper.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.34 no.10
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• pp.2995-3004
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• 2013

The structural, electronic, and optical properties of poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) have been comprehensively studied by density functional theory (DFT) to rationalize the experimentally observed properties. Rather, we employed periodic boundary conditions (PBC) method to simulate the polymer block, and calculated effective charge mass from the band structure calculation for describing charge transport properties. The simulated results of P3HT are consistent with the experimental results in band gaps, absorption spectra, and effective charge mass. Based on the same calculated methods as P3HT, a series of polymers have been designed on the basis of the two types of building blocks, furofurans and furofurans substituted with cyano (CN) groups, to investigate suitable polymers toward polymer solar cell (PSC) materials. The calculated results reveal that the polymers substituted with CN groups have good structural stability, low-lying FMO energy levels, wide absorption spectra, and smaller effective masses, which are due to their good rigidity and conjugation in comparison with P3HT. Besides, the insertion of CN groups improves the performance of PSC. Synthetically, the designed polymers PFF1 and PFF2 are the champion candidates toward PSC relative to P3HT.

• Polymer(Korea)
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.470-477
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• 2013

Multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) based nano-composite pastes having a high filler content are prepared for the facile fabrication of a counter electrode (CE) of dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC). A polystyrene-based functional block copolymer is prepared through a controlled "living" radical polymerization technique, affording a surface modifier for the dispersion control of MWCNT in the paste. Physical dispersion through a ball-milling method additionally confirms the importance of the dispersion control, providing DSSC with enhanced processibility and improved solar-to-electricity energy conversion efficiency (${\eta}$) values. The performances of the DSSCs are further improved through the incorporation of minor amount of platinum (Pt) nanoparticles into the MWCNT pastes. The DSSC with the Pt/MWCNT hybrid CE exhibits very high ${\eta}$ values, which is superior to that of DSSC with the standard Pt CE.

• Polymer Science and Technology
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.386-395
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• 2012

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.605-608
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• 2011

Hybrid composite membranes were prepared by coating poly(ethylene oxide) and $SiO_2$ particles onto the porous polypropylene nonwoven matrix. Gel polymer electrolytes prepared by soaking the hybrid composite membranes in an organic electrolyte solution exhibited ionic conductivities higher than $1.1{\times}10^{-3}Scm^{-1}$ at room temperature. Dyesensitized solar cell (DSSC) employing the hybrid composite membrane with PEO and 10 wt % $SiO_2$ exhibited an open circuit voltage of 0.77 V and a short circuit current of 10.78 $mAcm^{-2}$ at an incident light intensity of 100 $mWcm^{-2}$, yielding a conversion efficiency of 5.2%. DSSC employing the hybrid composite membrane showed more stable photovoltaic performance than that of the DSSC assembled with liquid electrolyte.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Illuminating and Electrical Installation Engineers
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• v.26 no.11
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• pp.104-108
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• 2012

Flexible organic thin film solar cell device with Bulk Hetero-Junction (BHJ) structure was fabricated with blended conjugated polymer of PCDTBT : $PC_{71}BM$ as active layer. Surface of ITO anode for the organic solar cell device was treated with ozone. The organic solar cell device with bare ITO showed short circuit current density ($J_{sc}$) of $8.2mA/cm^2$, open-circuit voltage ($V_{oc}$) of 0.73V, fill factor (FF) of 0.36, and power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 2.16%, respectively. The organic solar cell device with ozone treated ITO anode revealed distinctively improved performance parameters:$J_{sc}$ of $9.8mA/cm^2$, $V_{oc}$ of 0.82V, FF of 0.43, PCE(${\eta}$) of 3.42%.