Ordered bulk heterojunction solar cells with vertically aligned TiO2 nanorods embedded in a conjugated polymer

Vertically aligned TiO2 nanorods were prepared by its sol-gel which is spun coat onto aluminum anodic oxide template pregrown on an indium tin oxide glass substrate. The poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT), a conjugate polymer infiltrated into the nanorod arrays, and the combined system were used as the active layer. The nanorods/P3HT solar cell with cell size of 0.06 cm(2) demonstrated a power conversion efficiency of 0.512% while the bilayer TiO2 film/P3HT cell was 0.12%. The current work provides fabrication method for a stable well aligned nanorods/polymer hybrid solar cell production. (C) 2008 American Institute of Physics.