Magnetic field enhancement of organic photovoltaic cells performance

Enhancing Power Conversion Efficiency of Organic Solar Cells with Magnetoplasmonic Fe3O4@Au@m-ABS Nanoparticles

Organic-inorganic nanocomposites have the potential to be used in photovoltaic materials due to their eco-friendliness, suitable band gaps, and high stability. In this work, we integrated gold and Fe3O4 magnetic nanoparticles with poly-m-amino benzene sulfonic (m-ABS) to synthesize Fe3O4@Au@poly-(m-aminobenzenesulfonic acid) (Fe3O4@Au@m-ABS) magneto-plasmonic nanoparticles (MPNPs) to enhance the performance of the organic photovoltaic (OPV). These MPNPs exhibit broad UV-Vis absorption and a low band gap of 2.878 eV, enhancing their suitability for photovoltaic applications. The MPNPs were introduced into the ZnO electron transporting layer (ETL) and active layer to investigate the influence of MPNPs on the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of the OPVs. When 0.1 vol% MPNPs were incorporated in the ETL, the OPVs achieved a PCE of 14.24% and a fill factor (FF) of 69.10%. On the other hand, when 0.1 vol% MPNPs were incorporated in the active layer, the OPVs showed a PCE of 14.11% and an FF of 68.83%. However, the OPVs without MPNPs only possessed a PCE of 13.15% and an FF of 63.69%. The incorporation of MPNPs increased the PCE by 8.3% in the OPV device. These findings suggest that Fe3O4@Au@m-ABS MPNPs are promising nanocomposite materials for enhancing the performance of OPVs.

A DFT Study of Ruthenium fcc Nano-Dots: Size-Dependent Induced Magnetic Moments

Many areas of electronics, engineering and manufacturing rely on ferromagnetic materials, including iron, nickel and cobalt. Very few other materials have an innate magnetic moment rather than induced magnetic properties, which are more common. However, in a previous study of ruthenium nanoparticles, the smallest nano-dots showed significant magnetic moments. Furthermore, ruthenium nanoparticles with a face-centred cubic (fcc) packing structure exhibit high catalytic activity towards several reactions and such catalysts are of special interest for the electrocatalytic production of hydrogen. Previous calculations have shown that the energy per atom resembles that of the bulk energy per atom when the surface-to-bulk ratio < 1, but in its smallest form, nano-dots exhibit a range of other properties. Therefore, in this study, we have carried out calculations based on the density functional theory (DFT) with long-range dispersion corrections DFT-D3 and DFT-D3-(BJ) to systematically investigate the magnetic moments of two different morphologies and various sizes of Ru nano-dots in the fcc phase. To confirm the results obtained by the plane-wave DFT methodologies, additional atom-centred DFT calculations were carried out on the smallest nano-dots to establish accurate spin-splitting energetics. Surprisingly, we found that in most cases, the high spin electronic structures had the most favourable energies and were hence the most stable.

Enhancement of Efficiency of a TiO2-BiFeO3 Dye-Synthesized Solar Cell through Magnetization

Enhancement in the efficiency of a TiO₂ dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) has been demonstrated by introducing ferromagnetic perovskite BiFeO₃ and controlling the magnetic field, which induces two-dimensional material-like properties in the bulk of the TiO₂-BiFeO₃ DSSC (a 3-dimensional material). The effect of the concentration of BiFeO₃ as well as the magnetization direction on the performance of the TiO₂-BiFeO₃ DSSC has been investigated. After magnetization, it was confirmed that the current density, efficiency, and open circuit voltage of the TiO₂-BiFeO₃ DSSC were increased. The observed phenomena have been explained in terms of the Hall effect which is responsible for the reduction of the degree of freedom of the electron movement resulting in the two-dimensional material-like properties in the bulk of the TiO₂-BiFeO₃ DSSC.

Modeling and Simulating the Excited-State Dynamics of a System with Condensed Phases: A Machine Learning Approach

Simulating the irreversible quantum dynamics of exciton- and electron-transfer problems poses a nontrivial challenge. Because the irreversibility of the system dynamics is a result of quantum thermal activation and dissipation caused by the surrounding environment, it is necessary to include infinite environmental degrees of freedom in the simulation. Because the capabilities of full quantum dynamics simulations that include the surrounding molecular degrees of freedom are limited, employing a system-bath model is a practical approach. In such a model, the dynamics of excitons or electrons are described by a system Hamiltonian, while the other degrees of freedom that arise from the environmental molecules are described by a harmonic oscillator bath (HOB) and system-bath interaction parameters. By extending on a previous study of molecular liquids [ J. Chem. Theory Comput. 2020, 16, 2099], here, we construct a system-bath model for exciton- and electron-transfer problems by means of a machine learning approach. We determine both the system and system-bath interaction parameters, including the spectral distribution of the bath, using the electronic excitation energies obtained from a quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics (QM/MM) simulation that is conducted as a function of time. Using the analytical expressions of optical response functions, we calculate linear and two-dimensional electronic spectra (2DES) for indocarbocyanine dimers in methanol. From these results, we demonstrate the capability of our approach to elucidate the nonequilibrium exciton dynamics of a quantum system in a nonintuitive manner.

Ring currents modulate optoelectronic properties of aromatic chromophores at 25 T

The properties of organic molecules can be influenced by magnetic fields, and these magnetic field effects are diverse. They range from inducing nuclear Zeeman splitting for structural determination in NMR spectroscopy to polaron Zeeman splitting organic spintronics and organic magnetoresistance. A pervasive magnetic field effect on an aromatic molecule is the aromatic ring current, which can be thought of as an induction of a circular current of π-electrons upon the application of a magnetic field perpendicular to the π-system of the molecule. While in NMR spectroscopy the effects of ring currents on the chemical shifts of nearby protons are relatively well understood, and even predictable, the consequences of these modified electronic states on the spectroscopy of molecules has remained unknown. In this work, we find that photophysical properties of model phthalocyanine compounds and their aggregates display clear magnetic field dependences up to 25 T, with the aggregates showing more drastic magnetic field sensitivities depending on the intermolecular interactions with the amplification of ring currents in stacked aggregates. These observations are consistent with ring currents measured in NMR spectroscopy and simulated in time-dependent density functional theory calculations of magnetic field-dependent phthalocyanine monomer and dimer absorption spectra. We propose that ring currents in organic semiconductors, which commonly comprise aromatic moieties, may present new opportunities for the understanding and exploitation of combined optical, electronic, and magnetic properties.

Exciton-Coupled Electron Transfer Process Controlled by Non-Markovian Environments

We theoretically investigate an exciton-coupled electron transfer (XCET) process that is conversion of an exciton into a charge transfer state. This conversion happens in an exciton transfer (XT) process, and the electron moves away in an electron transfer (ET) process in multiple environments (baths). This XCET process plays an essential role in the harvesting of solar energy in biological and photovoltaic materials. We develop a practical theoretical model to study the efficiency of the XCET process that occurs either in consecutive or concerted processes under the influence of non-Markovian baths. The role of quantum coherence in the XT-ET system and the baths is investigated using reduced hierarchal equations of motion (HEOM). This model includes independent baths for each XT and ET state, in addition to a XCET bath for the conversion process. We found that, while quantum system-bath coherence is important in the XT and ET processes, coherence between the XT and ET processes must be suppressed in order to realize that an efficient irreversible XCET process through the weak off-diagonal interaction between the XT and ET bridge sites arises from an XCET bath.