Enhanced performance of inverted non-fullerene organic solar cells by using metal oxide electronand hole-selective layers with process temperature ≤150 °C

Abstract

In this work, an efficient inverted organic solar cell (OSC) based on the non-fullerene PBDB-T:IT-M blend system is demonstrated by using an aqueous solution processed ZnO electron-selective layer with the whole process temperature ≤150 °C and a thermally evaporated MoO3 hole-selective layer The ZnO selective layer is deposited by aqueous solution and prepared in a low-temperature process, so that it can be compatible with the roll-to-roll process. The proposed device achieves an enhanced power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 9.33% compared with the device based on the high-temperature sol-gel-processed ZnO selective layer, which achieves a PCE of 8.62%. The inverted device also shows good stability, keeping more than 82% of its initial PCE after being stored under ambient air conditions and a humidity of around 40% without any encapsulation for 240 h. The results show the potential for the fabrication of efficient non-fullerene OSCs with low-temperature metal oxide selective layers.