Achieving over 18 % Efficiency Organic Solar Cell Enabled by a ZnO‐Based Hybrid Electron Transport Layer with an Operational Lifetime up to 5 Years

• DOI: 10.1002/anie.202207397
• Publication Date: 2022-06-29T05:15:00Z
• Authors: Shitong Li; Qiang Fu; Lingxian Meng; Xiangjian Wan; Liming Ding; Guanyu Lu; Guanghao Lu; Zhaoyang Yao; Chenxi Li; Yongsheng Chen
• Keywords: 7. Clean energy; 01 natural sciences; 0104 chemical sciences

AbstractAlthough organic solar cells (OSCs) have delivered an impressive power conversion efficiency (PCE) of over 19 %, most of them demonstrated rather limited stability. So far, there are hardly any effective and universal strategies to improve stability of state‐of‐the‐art OSCs. Herein, we developed a hybrid electron‐transport layer (ETL) in inverted OSCs using ZnO and a new modifying agent (NMA), and significantly improved the stability and PCEs for all the tested devices. In particular, when applied in the D18 : N3 system, its inverted OSC exhibits so far the highest PCE (18.20 %) among inverted single‐junction OSCs, demonstrating an extrapolated T80 lifetime of 7572 h (equivalent to 5 years under outdoor exposure). This is the first report with T80 over 5000 h among OSCs with over 18 % PCE. Furthermore, a high PCE of 16.12 % can be realized even in a large‐area device (1 cm2). This hybrid ETL strategy provides a strong stimulus for highly prospective commercialization of OSCs.