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Updated: Feb 18, 2026
Morphology Control for Fully Printable Organic–Inorganic Bulk-heterojunction Solar Cells Based on a Ti-alkoxide and Semiconducting Polymer
Published on: January 10, 2017
Photo-degradation of high efficiency fullerene-free polymer solar cells
Mushfika Baishakhi Upama1, Matthew Wright, Md Arafat Mahmud
1School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering, University of New South Wales, 2052, Sydney, Australia. m.upama@student.unsw.edu.au n.elumalai@unsw.edu.au.
Abstract:
Polymer solar cells are a promising technology for the commercialization of low cost, large scale organic solar cells. With the evolution of high efficiency (>13%) non-fullerene polymer solar cells, the stability of the cells has become a crucial parameter to be considered. Among the several degradation mechanisms of polymer solar cells, burn-in photo-degradation is relatively less studied. Herein, we present the first systematic study of photo-degradation of novel PBDB-T:ITIC fullerene-free polymer solar cells. The thermally treated and as-prepared PBDB-T:ITIC solar cells were exposed to continuous 1 sun illumination for 5 hours. The aged devices exhibited rapid losses in the short-circuit current density and fill factor. The severe short-circuit current and fill factor burn in losses were attributed to trap mediated charge recombination, as evidenced by an increase in Urbach energy for aged devices.
