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Published on: September 27, 2018
Overcoming the Interfacial Photocatalytic Degradation of Nonfullerene Acceptor-Based Organic Photovoltaics by
Kiyoung Park1,2, Ju-Hyeon Kim1,2, Jong Sung Jin3
1School of Materials Science and Engineering (SMSE), Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), Gwangju 61005, Republic of Korea.
Abstract:
Although recent dramatic advances in power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) have resulted in values over 19%, the poor photostability of organic photovoltaics (OPVs) has been a serious bottleneck to their commercialization. The photocatalytic effect, which is caused by incident ultraviolet-A (UV-A, 320-400 nm) light in the most commonly used zinc oxide (ZnO) electron transport layer (ETL), significantly deteriorates the photostability of OPVs. In this work, we develop a new and facile method to enhance the photostability of nonfullerene acceptor-based OPVs by introducing UV-A-insensitive titanium suboxide (TiO) ETL. Through an in-depth analysis of mass information at the interface between the ETL and photoactive layer, we confirm that the UV-A-insensitive TiO suppresses the photocatalytic effect. The resulting device employing the TiO ETL shows excellent photostability, obtaining 80% of the initial PCE for up to 200 h under 1 sun illumination, which is 10 times longer than that of the conventional ZnO system (19 h).
