High-Efficiency ITO-Free Organic Photovoltaics with Superior Flexibility and Upscalability

Developing indium-tin-oxide (ITO)-free flexible organic photovoltaics (OPVs) with upscaling capacity is of great significance for practical applications of OPVs. Unfortunately, the efficiencies of the corresponding devices lag far behind those of ITO-based rigid small-area counterparts. To address this issue, an advanced device configuration is designed and fabricated featuring a top-illuminated structure with ultrathin Ag as the transparent electrode. First, a conjugated polyelectrolyte layer, i.e., PCP-Li, is inserted to effectively connect the bottom Ag anode and the hole transport layer, achieving good photon to electron conversion. Second, charge collecting grids are deposited to suppress the increased resistance loss with the upscaling of the device area, realizing almost full retention of device efficiency from 0.06 to 1 cm(2). Third, the designed device delivers the best efficiency of 15.56% with the area of 1 cm(2) on polyimide substrate, representing as the record among the ITO-free, large-area, flexible OPVs. Interestingly, the device exhibits no degradation after 100 000 bending cycles with a radius of 4 mm, which is the best result for flexible OPVs. This work provides insight into device structure design and optimization for OPVs with high efficiency, low cost, superior flexibility, and upscaling capacity, indicating the potential for the future commercialization of OPVs.

Automated summary

This study develops an advanced device structure for flexible organic photovoltaics (OPVs) without indium-tin-oxide (ITO), using ultrathin Ag as the transparent electrode. The designed device achieves high efficiency, low cost, superior flexibility, and upscaling capacity, making it a potential candidate for future commercialization of OPVs.