Nanostructured Electron-Selective Interlayer for Efficient Inverted Organic Solar Cells

Jiyun Song; Jaehoon Lim; Donggu Lee; M Thambidurai; Jun Young Kim; Myeongjin Park; Hyung-Jun Song; Seonghoon Lee; Kookheon Char; Changhee Lee

doi:10.1021/acsami.5b04624

Nanostructured Electron-Selective Interlayer for Efficient Inverted Organic Solar Cells

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2015 Aug 26;7(33):18460-6. doi: 10.1021/acsami.5b04624. Epub 2015 Aug 11.

Authors

Jiyun Song¹, Jaehoon Lim^{2

3}, Donggu Lee¹, M Thambidurai¹, Jun Young Kim¹, Myeongjin Park¹, Hyung-Jun Song^{1

3}, Seonghoon Lee⁴, Kookheon Char², Changhee Lee¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Inter-university Semiconductor Research Center, Seoul National University , 1, Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, Seoul 151-744, Korea.
² School of Chemical and Biological Engineering, The National Creative Research Initiative Center for Intelligent Hybrids, The WCU Program of Chemical Convergence for Energy & Environment, Seoul National University , 1, Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, Seoul 151-744, Korea.
³ Chemistry Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory , Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, United States.
⁴ School of Chemistry, Seoul National University , 1, Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, Seoul 151-747, Korea.

PMID: 26238224
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.5b04624

Abstract

We report a unique nanostructured electron-selective interlayer comprising of In-doped ZnO (ZnO:In) and vertically aligned CdSe tetrapods (TPs) for inverted polymer:fullerene bulkheterojunction (BHJ) solar cells. With dimension-controlled CdSe TPs, the direct inorganic electron transport pathway is provided, resulting in the improvement of the short circuit current and fill factor of devices. We demonstrate that the enhancement is attributed to the roles of CdSe TPs that reduce the recombination losses between the active layer and buffer layer, improve the hole-blocking as well as electron-transporting properties, and simultaneously improve charge collection characteristics. As a result, the power conversion efficiency of PTB7:PC70BM based solar cell with nanostructured CdSe TPs increases to 7.55%. We expect this approach can be extended to a general platform for improving charge extraction in organic solar cells.

Keywords: CdSe tetrapods; bulkheterojunction; electron buffer layer; electron-selective interlayer; nanostructured extraction layer; organic−inorganic hybrid solar cells.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't