No Cover Image

Journal article 704 views 125 downloads

Toward Improved Lifetimes of Organic Solar Cells under Thermal Stress: Substrate-Dependent Morphological Stability of PCDTBT:PCBM Films and Devices

Zhe Li Orcid Logo, Kar Ho Chiu, Raja Shahid Ashraf, Sarah Fearn, Rajeev Dattani, Him Cheng Wong, Ching-Hong Tan, Jiaying Wu, João T. Cabral, James R. Durrant

Scientific Reports, Volume: 5, Start page: 15149

Swansea University Author: Zhe Li Orcid Logo

Check full text

DOI (Published version): 10.1038/srep15149

Abstract

Morphological stability is a key requirement for outdoor operation of organic solar cells. We demonstrate that morphological stability and lifetime of polymer/fullerene based solar cells under thermal stress depend strongly on the substrate interface on which the active layer is deposited. In partic...

Full description

Published in: Scientific Reports
ISSN: 2045-2322
Published: 2015
Online Access: Check full text

URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa32083
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Abstract: Morphological stability is a key requirement for outdoor operation of organic solar cells. We demonstrate that morphological stability and lifetime of polymer/fullerene based solar cells under thermal stress depend strongly on the substrate interface on which the active layer is deposited. In particular, we find that the stability of benchmark PCDTBT/PCBM solar cells under modest thermal stress is substantially increased in inverted solar cells employing a ZnO substrate compared to conventional devices employing a PEDOT:PSS substrate. This improved stability is observed to correlate with PCBM nucleation at the 50 nm scale, which is shown to be strongly influenced by different substrate interfaces. Employing this approach, we demonstrate remarkable thermal stability for inverted PCDTBT:PC70BM devices on ZnO substrates, with negligible (<2%) loss of power conversion efficiency over 160 h under 85 °C thermal stress and minimal thermally induced “burn-in” effect. We thus conclude that inverted organic solar cells, in addition to showing improved environmental stability against ambient humidity exposure as widely reported previously, can also demonstrate enhanced morphological stability. As such we show that the choice of suitable substrate interfaces may be a key factor in achieving prolonged lifetimes for organic solar cells under thermal stress conditions.
College: Faculty of Science and Engineering
Start Page: 15149

Similar Items