Polymer-assisted deposition of SrTiO3 film as cathode buffer layer in inverted polymer solar cells

Polymers-assisted deposition (PAD) method has been employed to prepare SrTiO3(STO) films on ITO substrates, which have been applied as cathode buffer layer in inverted polymer solar cells. ZnO and TiO2 films on ITO glass were also prepared via PAD and have been utilized as cathode buffer layers in the inverted polymer solar cells for comparison, which show better efficiency than those using ZnO and TiO2 as interfacial layers prepared through other methods. The power conversion efficiency (PCE) of similar to 3.5% was achieved with STO as the cathode buffer layer as well as MoO3 as the anode buffer layer, which is comparable to that with ZnO and TiO2 prepared using the same method as cathode buffer layers. Our findings indicate that STO has the potential to be a candidate as interfacial layers in solar cell devices. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.