The innovation engine for new materials

Kayla Nguyen

Kayla Nguyen

University: 

University of California Santa Barbara

Major: 

Physics

Site Abroad: 

Department of Materials, Oxford University

Mentor(s): 

Peter Kovacik
Shawn Willis

Faculty Sponsor(s): 

Andrew Watt

Project Title: 

Vacuum Deposition Studies on Organic Photovoltaics

Project Description: 

The field of organic semiconductor materials and devices are emerging with extending capabilities and possibilities for redefining modern electronics; one of the subfields of organic semiconductors is organic photovoltaic (OPV) for energy conversion. Due to the low cost for energy conversion, organic photovoltaic have attracted much attention for research is done to improve the power conversion efficiency of for the thin film organic cell. The method interested for this project is vacuum deposition of organic thin films. Vacuum deposition method for OPV can be used to fabricate multilayer photovoltaic cell structures by configuring the layers such that cells are in series or parallel. By this design, the Voc (open circuit voltage) or Jsc (short circuit current) of the OPV will increase as well as their overall efficiency. However, much work is still being done on refining this method by understanding the characteristics of OPV. Our experiments consist of fabricating bulk hetero-junction multilayer cells in which the bulk is sandwiched between different layers of donor and acceptor materials. From this design, we’re able to characterize the effects of different ways of stacking the materials which will give us more information to better improve the efficiency of OPV.