Engineering Infra-red Photon Absorbing Materials for Organic Solar Cells

This thesis aims to investigate different infrared absorbing molecules and how their properties are affected by their incorporation into polymer nanoparticles. Metal-free phthalocyanine-H2Pc, uranyl super phthalocyanine-USPc, and europium bisphthalocyanine were studied-EuPc2; the latter two capable of IR absorption. Due to the discovery of USPc’s moisture sensitivity, only H2Pc and EuPc2 were derivatized to facilitate encapsulation in polystyrene nanoparticles through a miniemulsion polymerization. These novel phthalocyanines attained loadings of up to 41wt% and exhibit substantial broadening of absorption peaks. Furthermore, the EuPc2 loaded particles also reveal an unprecedented gain in extinction coefficient of the NIR and radical absorption peaks. The leaching behavior of the dye was also studied, as this had not been undertaken in the literature, and revealed the need for a method of polymerizing/chemically binding phthalocyanines into nanoparticles; with preliminary steps taken to realize this goal.MAS