Plexiglass glove box for organic solar cells

Abstract

Abstract The term Glove Box probably creates an image of a glass box with black gloves, but Glove Boxes are as varied as the applications in which they are used. It is a hermetically sealed, watertight box, built for the purpose of sensitive applications. In this paper we present the design, the implementation and the testing of a Glove Box using plexiglass of 6mm thickness. The entire control of the system is flashed on an ATmega328 microcontroller. The sensors inside the box include oxygen sensor, gas sensor, humidity and temperature sensor. The plexiglass used provides robustness for the system but being lightweight it can be easily moved in different places in a research laboratory, compared with the steel Glove Boxes which are difficult to handle. The Glove Box was tested, by filling it up with Argon (inert gas) and introducing bulk heterojunction organic solar cells (BHJ OSC) and leaving them inside for 12hours. The measurement of the OSCs after 12h revealed that their efficiency decreased with only 20% compared to those left outside of the Glove Box which had an efficiency decrease of more than 70% from their initial value.