I am working in the area of organic solar cells. I need to anneal my samples in 1% humidity conditions and we don't have a glove box. How can I set up a chamber for this?. Is there is any technique to reduce the humidity inside a chamber?
You could use silica gel and low vacuum pumping in a sealed vessel adapted for the annealing process you have planned. Low vacuum means that you can obtain by a simple rotative pump (a pressure in the 10^-1 Atm range may be enaugh, depending on your specific experimental requirements).
The problem may arise in fixing a process RH at 1% with sufficient precision. But, again, this depends on your experimental requirements: for example, if you need the RH during annealing not to be "larger than" 1%, the above setup may be enaugh.
Working on organic solar cells without a glovebox system is extremely challenging! The cells need to have multiple steps for their processing. The oxygen and water can play so much detrimental effect on the device performance. To make meaningful research results, a glovebox system is essential for fabrication of organic electronic devices.
Agree with Xuhua Wang ..... I am not sure how are you fabricating your organic films? is it inside the thermal evaporation system then probably you can think of annealing during the same chamber by adding some extra components to the evaporation chamber... if you are spin coating in open air then probably the idea of Giuseppe Curro will work. Additionally, you can make your small make shift glove box model... evacuate few times and filled with nitrogen gas as cheap as 25000/- Rs. However, the characteristics will not be as great as the original glove box. In a nut shell, Vacuum and pure nitrogen/argon is the only relief for you for 1% RH.
@Rajagopalan Pandey to answer your question, a glovebox system should have 3 individual chambers and can act individually if necessary. You could find more information from Mbraun glovebox systems on the company's website. This type of glovebox system is ideal to process organic electronic devices. One chamber is used for spin-coating; One chamber is used for device preparation, one chamber is for the thermal evaporation or linked to sputtering systems or attaching a small vacuum oven. The sealed doors or transfer channels are linked between chamber to chamber. The environment at each chamber can be controlled such as moisture and oxygen levels. This type of glovebox systems is commonly used by industry or research institutes to control the processing well. Although there are a simplified glovebox system very often used in the university research. Hope answering u question.
I agree with Xuhua Wang,
It is difficult to fabricate and design efficient organic electronic devices without the glovebox. Without avoiding water and oxygen during the fabrication of your device, your device's efficiency and the quantum yield is expected to be tacky results.
Best Wishes
- Badges
- Science topic