Observation of orientation-dependent photovoltaic behaviors in aligned organic nanowires

We fabricated organic nanowire (NW) solar cells based on aligned NWs of n-channel organic semiconductor, N,N'-bis(2-phenylethyl)-perylene-3,4:9,10-tetracarboxylic diimide via a filtration-and-transfer alignment method. It is well known that most efficient charge transport typically takes place along the long axis of organic NWs. However, there is no systematic study on the correlation between the orientation of NWs in the active layer and the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of solar cells. Our results demonstrate the effects of alignment direction of NWs on the PCE of organic solar cells with single-crystalline NWs. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.