Author, as appears in the article.: Moustafa E; Sánchez JG; Marsal LF; Pallarès J

Department: Enginyeria Electrònica, Elèctrica i Automàtica

URV's Author/s: Marsal Garví, Luis Francisco / Pallarès Marzal, Josep / SANCHEZ LÓPEZ, JOSÉ GUADALUPE

Keywords: Thin film deposition techniques Stability of organic solar cells Spray pyrolysis Polymer solar cells Interfacial layers Film morphology

Abstract: In this research work, for the first time, stable high-performance inverted polymer solar cells (iPSCs) have been fabricated utilizing facile and low-cost intermittent spray pyrolysis (SP) technique to deposit transparent thin films of zinc oxide (ZnO) as electron interfacial transporting layer (ETL). The performed iPSCs have the structure of ITO/ZnO/PBDTTT-EFT:PC70BM/V2O5/Ag. The thickness diversity of the ETL layer was adjusted by varying the concentration of the ZnO precursor solution, while fixed thicknesses were fabricated for the other layers in the iPSCs. Moreover, the influence of the deposition techniques on the interface roughness, performance, and stability of the devices has been detected and discussed. By increasing the concentration of the ZnO precursor solution as well as the number of spraying running cycles, the thickness and roughness of the ZnO film increase. The highest power conversion efficiency (10%) of the fresh iPSCs with ZnO-SP was obtained by using a ZnO-precursor solution concentration of 1:4 in ethanol with 7 spraying running cycles. This efficiency is almost the same as the iPSCs fabricated ZnO-ETL by the laboratory-scale spin coating (SC) technique that was used as a reference. Furthermore, it was interesting to observe that the stability of the devices intermittently sprayed by ZnO-SP was higher than the controlled reference ones that were fabricated by ZnO-SC. Hence, deep insight studies have been carried out for the fresh and degraded iPSCs using dark current-voltage characteristics and impedance spectroscopy measurements to investigate the electrical parameters for the ZnO film obtained by the SP and SC techniques. The results indicated that the interface roughness between the ZnO and the active layers plays an important role in enhancing light trapping and the light absorbance inside the cell which increases the generated electric current as well as the stability of the devices.

Thematic Areas: Materials science, multidisciplinary Materials chemistry Energy engineering and power technology Energy & fuels Electrochemistry Electrical and electronic engineering Chemistry, physical Chemical engineering (miscellaneous)

licence for use: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/

Author's mail: lluis.marsal@urv.cat josep.pallares@urv.cat

Author identifier: 0000-0002-5976-1408 0000-0001-7221-5383

Record's date: 2023-02-19

Papper version: info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Link to the original source: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsaem.1c00455

Licence document URL: http://repositori.urv.cat/ca/proteccio-de-dades/

Papper original source: Acs Applied Energy Materials. 4 (4): 4099-4111

APA: Moustafa E; Sánchez JG; Marsal LF; Pallarès J (2021). Stability Enhancement of High-Performance Inverted Polymer Solar Cells Using ZnO Electron Interfacial Layer Deposited by Intermittent Spray Pyrolysis Approach. Acs Applied Energy Materials, 4(4), 4099-4111. DOI: 10.1021/acsaem.1c00455

Article's DOI: 10.1021/acsaem.1c00455

Entity: Universitat Rovira i Virgili

Journal publication year: 2021

Publication Type: Journal Publications