Simple and green route for fabrication of a nanostructured of the graphene‐Fe3O4@PANI for the photovoltaic activity

• Published in: Electrochimica acta Vol. 399; p. 139327
• Main Authors: Sadegh, Fatemeh, Modarresi-Alam, Ali Reza, Sadegh, Negar, Bahrpeyma, Abdolhamid, Shabzendedar, Sahar, Kerman, Kagan, Noroozifar, Meissam
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 10-12-2021; Elsevier BV
• Subjects: Aniline; Circuits; Conductive polymers; Energy conversion efficiency; Energy gap; Ferric chloride; Gr(graphene)|Fe3O4@PANI; Graphene; In-situ polymerization; Infrared spectroscopy; Iron oxides; Magnetic properties; Nanocomposites; Open circuit voltage; Photovoltaic cells; Polyanilines; Polymer solar cell; Polymers; Short circuit currents; Solar cells; Spin-orbit interactions; Titanium dioxide; Gr(graphene)|Fe3O4@PANI; Conductive polymers; In-situ polymerization; Polymer solar cell
• ISSN: 0013-4686; 1873-3859
• DOI: 10.1016/j.electacta.2021.139327

•Synthesis of Gr|Fe3O4@PANI nanocomposite via simple, low cost, one step, green, and in-situ polymerization method.•An unusual indirect transition and increase of triplet state of excitons arising from a spin-orbit coupling created by Fe3O4.•The fabrication of single-layer polymer solar cells using Gr|Fe3O4@PANI as active layer.•The donor and acceptor mechanisms for the electron transfer in polymer solar cell are proposed.
In this work, for the first time, Gr (graphene)|Fe3O4@PANI nanocomposite was synthesized from graphite, aniline-HCl and FeCl3.6H2O via a simple in-situ and green route as the active layer for photovoltaic application. The proposed nanocomposite was characterized by FT-IR, SEM, TEM, UV-vis spectroscopy, XRD technique, and then the thermal, magnetic, electrochemical, and photovoltaic properties investigated. The energy gap was calculated, and it is noticed that the optical band gap of nanocomposite fallows an indirect transition, arising from a strong spin-orbit coupling created by Fe3O4 in the Gr|Fe3O4@PANI nanocomposite. Next, polymer solar cell (PSC) based on this nanocomposite was fabricated with a simple device structure of FTO│TiO2│Gr|Fe3O4@PANI│Al. The photovoltaic properties of the cells have been evaluated under AM 1.5G illumination at 60 mW/cm2 with a solar simulator. A power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 1.81% was observed with a short circuit current (Jsc) of 4.14 mA/cm2, an open-circuit voltage (Voc) of 0.71 V, which indicates this kind of conjugated polymer should be a promising material in the application of polymer solar cells.
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