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Published on: April 25, 2018
High performance polymer solar cells with as-prepared zirconium acetylacetonate film as cathode buffer layer
Zhan'ao Tan1, Shusheng Li1, Fuzhi Wang1
1State Key Laboratory of Alternate Electrical Power System with Renewable Energy Sources, Beijing Key Laboratory of Energy Security and Clean Utilization, North China Electric Power University, Beijing 102206, China.
Abstract:
Low-work-function active metals are commonly used as cathode in polymer solar cells (PSCs), but sensitivity of the active metals towards moisture and oxygen results in poor stability of the devices. Therefore, solution-proceessable and stable cathode buffer layer is of great importance for the application of PSCs. Here we demonstrate high performance PSCs by employing as-prepared zirconium acetylacetonate (a-ZrAcac) film spin-cast from its ethanol solution as cathode buffer layer. The PSCs based on a low bandgap polymer PBDTBDD as donor and PC60BM as acceptor with a-ZrAcac/Al cathode demonstrated an average power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 8.75% which is significantly improved than that of the devices with traditional Ca/Al cathode. The improved photovoltaic performance is benefitted from the decreased series resistance and enhanced light harvest of the PSCs with the a-ZrAcac/Al cathode. The results indicate that a-ZrAcac is a promising high performance cathode buffer layer for fabricating large area flexible PSCs.
