Effect of nanoscale SubPc interfacial layer on the performance of inverted polymer solar cells based on P3HT/PC71BM

The effect of a nanoscale boron subphthalocyanine chloride (SubPc) interfacial layer on the performance of inverted polymer solar cells based on poly (3-hexyl thiophene) (P3HT) and [6,6]-phenyl-C(71)-butyric acid methyl ester (PC(71)BM) was studied. When a 1 nm SubPc layer was introduced between the active layer (P3HT:PC(71)BM) and MoO(x) in the device with ITO/ZnO/P3HT:PC(71)BM/SubPc/MoO(x)/Al configuration, the power conversion efficiency (PCE) was increased from 3.42 (without SubPc) to 3.59%. This improvement is mainly attributed to the enhanced open-circuit voltage from 0.62 to 0.64 V. When the Flory-Huggins interaction parameters were estimated from the solubility parameters through the contact angle measurement, it revealed that the interaction between SubPc and PC(71)BM is more attractive than that between SubPc and P3HT at the interface of P3HT:PC(71)BM/SubPc, through which charges are well transported from the active layer to the anode. This is supported by a decrease of the contact resistance from 5.49 (SubPc 0 nm) to 0.94 MΩ cm (SubPc 1 nm). The photoelectron spectra provide another evidence for the enhanced PCE, exhibiting that the 1 nm thick SubPc layer extracts more photoelectrons from the active layer than other thicknesses.