Analysis of Annealing Process on P3HT:PCBM-Based Polymer Solar Cells Using Optical and Impedance Spectroscopy

Thermal annealing is a well-known process for polymer solar cells because it improves the device characteristics. Especially, the carrier mobility and the light absorption of P3HT:PCBM are significantly improved after the annealing process. Here, we examined the changes in the morphology of P3HT:PCBM film according to the annealing temperature to find the changes during the thermal annealing process by measuring the optical absorption and X-ray diffraction. We also investigated the effect of two different annealing process (pre- and post-annealing) on the device performance of the standard polymer solar cells consisting of ITO/MoO3 (10 nm)/P3HT:PCBM (150 nm)/LiF (0.5 nm)/Al (100 nm) by measuring current density voltage and impedance characteristics. From the results, we found that the improvement in terms of the power conversion efficiency of the post-annealed device originated from the decrease of injection resistance between P3HT:PCBM layer and Al electrodes.