Recent advances in polymer solar cells: realization of high device performance by incorporating water/alcohol-soluble conjugated polymers as electrode buffer layer

Abstract

This Progress Report highlights recent advances in polymer solar cells with special attention focused on the recent rapid-growing progress in methods that use a thin layer of alcohol/water-soluble conjugated polymers as key component to obtain optimized device performance, but also discusses novel materials and device architectures made by major prestigious institutions in this field. We anticipate that due to drastic improvements in efficiency and easy utilization, this method opens up new opportunities for PSCs from various material systems to improve towards 10% efficiency, and many novel device structures will emerge as suitable architectures for developing the ideal roll-to-roll type processing of polymer-based solar cells.

Keywords: alcohol/water-soluble conjugated polymers; electrode buffer layer; polymer solar cells; power conversion efficiency.