Air Environment Degradation of a High-Performance Inverted PTB7-Th:PC 70 BM Solar Cell

Gonzalo Lastra, Victor S. Balderrama, Luis Resendiz, Josep Pallares, Lluis F. Marsal, Victor Cabrera, Magali Estrada

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

7 Scopus citations

Abstract

In this paper, the degradation of the electrical parameters of a high-performance inverted PTB7-Th:PC 70 BM solar cell, having an efficiency of 10.95%, is analyzed. The cathode side is formed by indium tin oxide (ITO) material in contact with 10 nm of Poly[(9,9-bis(3'-(N,N-dimethylamino)propyl)-2,7-fluorene)-alt-2,7-(9,9-dioctylfluorene) (PFN) and 0.6 nm of lithium fluoride. The anode side is formed by V 2 O 5 (hole-transport layer) in contact with Ag metal. The current density-voltage (J-V) curves, as well as the short-circuit current (J SC ), open-circuit voltage (V OC ), fill factor, and power conversion efficiency parameters, were obtained from fabricated inverted organic solar cells (OSCs). The degradation of these parameters was measured as a function of time when the devices were exposed to an air environment. A metal-insulator-metal model was implemented using the device simulator Silvaco/ATLAS technology computer-aided design (TCAD) to simulate the degradation of the cells. The experimental and simulated J-V curves show good agreement on the fourth quadrant. To verify our model, a second structure was fabricated (ITO/PFN/PTB7:PC 70 BM/V 2 O 5 /Ag) and the experimental results were successfully fitted, which indicated that the proposed procedure can be used to predict the degradation behavior of an inverted OSC when it is exposed to ambient air.

Original languageEnglish
Article number8624522
Pages (from-to)464-468
Number of pages5
JournalIEEE Journal of Photovoltaics
Volume9
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 2019

Keywords

  • Fill factor (FF)
  • PTB7-Th:PC BM blend
  • numerical simulation
  • organic solar cell (OSC)

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