Charge Transport Studies in Pure and CdS Doped PBDTTPD:CdS Nanocomposite for Solar Cell Application

The recent trends in organic photovoltaic is towards the development of hybrid solar cells using the active absorption layer of a nancomposite layer having conjugated polymer incorporated with inorganic quantum dots, nanorods, nanoparticles, etc. The dispersion of nanomaterials in polymer matrix leads to inadequate charge transfer, agglomeration etc., which is a hindrance towards achieving high efficiency in the hybrid solar cells. On the other hand if nanomaterials are grown in situ into polymer matrix, it may enable to overcome the above disadvantage. Keeping this in view, we have synthesized a nanocomposite of PBDTTPD:CdS by in situ growth of CdS nanorods into polymer matrix. The charge transport mechanism was studied and the nanocomposite showed improvement in charge carrier mobility over the pure polymer which has been attributed to improvement in inter-chain charge transport by the presence of inorganic nanocrystals in polymer matrix.