Highly Conducting MXene-Silver Nanowire Transparent Electrodes for Flexible Organic Solar Cells

MXene, a new class of two-dimensional materials, offers a unique combination of metallic conductivity and hydrophilicity. This material has shown great promise in numerous applications including electromagnetic interference shielding, sensing, energy storage, and catalysis. In this paper, we report on the fabrication of transparent, conductive, and flexible MXene/silver nanowire (AgNW) hybrid films, resulting in the highest figure of merit (162.49) in the reported literature to date regarding an MXene-based transparent electrode. The hybrid films, prepared via a simple and scalable solution-processed method, exhibit good electrical conductivity, high transmittance, low roughness, work function matching, and robust mechanical performance. Following film fabrication, the hybrid electrodes were demonstrated to function as transparent electrodes in fullerene molecule PTB7-Th:PC71BM and nonfullerene molecule PBDB-T:ITIC organic photovoltaics (OPVs). In an effort to further improve the performance of flexible OPVs, a ternary structure of PBDB-T:ITIC:PC71BM was demonstrated, resulting in a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 8.30%. Mechanical properties were also quantified, with the flexible ternary organic solar cells capable of retaining 84.6% of the original PCE after 1000 bending and unbending cycles to a 5 mm bending radius. These optoelectronic and mechanical performance metrics represent a breakthrough in the field of flexible optoelectronics.