On Friday, December 14, 2018, Zeinab EL MOUSSAWI, PhD student in Materials, Mechanics, Civil Engineering, Electrochemistry at the Laboratory of Electrochemistry and Physicochemistry of Materials and Interfaces (LEPMI), will submit her thesis " Carbon nanotube-based nano-architected composite materials for photovolataic application".
The defense will take place at 10am, in Amphi 1 of the IUT Chambéry, on the Bourget-du-Lac campus.
Summary of the thesis
The use of carbon nanotubes (CNT) in photovoltaic (PV) cells is limited to their application as electrodes or as dopants in the active layer, due to their extremely high conductivity, which causes short circuits within the cell. In this thesis, we proposed and validated a new concept involving the development of SWNTs as alternative active acceptor materials to PCBM (fullerene derivative) for organic photovoltaics. We have developed a chemical synthesis route based on the controlled functionalization of SWNTs and the quantification of their degree of functionalization. This new concept will enable the elaboration of "tailor-made" SWNTs with modulable optical and electrochemical conductivities and properties, suitable for integration in photovoltaic devices in heterojunction with commercial pi-conjugated donor polymers. Characterization of the final properties of the synthesized SWNTs showed that conductivity, UV-visible absorption and electrochemical properties evolve gradually in two modes depending on the degree of functionalization. In addition, the controlled functionalization of SWNTs induces a dispersant effect, facilitating their integration into PV devices using existing solvent-based processing technologies such as inkjet printing or roll-to-roll solvent-based thin-film processing. The proof-of-concept was validated in PV cell tests with a standard commercial P3HT polymer and a synthesized low-optical-gap polymer.