The Effect of Thermal Annealing on Phase Separation in Organic Photovoltaic Films

Abstract

In our research, we used amplitude modulated atomic force microscopy to study the effect of thermal annealing on the morphology of four recently developed bulk heterojunction photovoltaic films. Each cell was fabricated by blending a different conjugated foldamer or self-assembling polymer with Phenyl-C₇₁-Butyric acid Methyl ester. We took topography and phase images of both the conjugated foldamer and blended material before and after thermal annealing. The topography and phase images were then analyzed to understand how thermal annealing affects phase separation in these new materials.