Enhanced Performance of Inverted Non-Fullerene Organic Solar Cells by Using Metal Oxide Electron- and Hole-Selective Layers with Process Temperature ≤150 °C

Polymers (Basel). 2018 Jul 2;10(7):725. doi: 10.3390/polym10070725.

Abstract

In this work, an efficient inverted organic solar cell (OSC) based on the non-fullerene PBDB-T:IT-M blend system is demonstrated by using an aqueous solution processed ZnO electron-selective layer with the whole process temperature ≤150 °C and a thermally evaporated MoO₃ hole-selective layer The ZnO selective layer is deposited by aqueous solution and prepared in a low-temperature process, so that it can be compatible with the roll-to-roll process. The proposed device achieves an enhanced power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 9.33% compared with the device based on the high-temperature sol-gel-processed ZnO selective layer, which achieves a PCE of 8.62%. The inverted device also shows good stability, keeping more than 82% of its initial PCE after being stored under ambient air conditions and a humidity of around 40% without any encapsulation for 240 h. The results show the potential for the fabrication of efficient non-fullerene OSCs with low-temperature metal oxide selective layers.

Keywords: aqueous solution; electron-selective layer; non-fullerene acceptor; organic solar cells.