Characterization of organic photovoltaic devices with indium-tin-oxide anode treated by plasma in various gases

Indium-tin-oxide (ITO) anode treated by different gas plasma or UV ozone has been used for photovoltaic (PV) cells with structure of ITO/copper phthalocyanine (CuPc)/C60/bathocuproine/Al. Both surface energy and work function of the ITO substrates were affected by these treatments. However, the main performance parameters of PV cells, including short circuit current, open circuit voltage, power conversion efficiency, and fill factor, were almost unaffected. On the other hand, series and shunt resistances of the PV cells derived from numerical fitting of I-V curves were not significantly changed with different treatments. Therefore, no significant impact of substrate treatment on hole collection was concluded, although hole injection under forward bias showed strong dependence on treatment methods. It indicates that hole transfer from CuPc layer to ITO is not the bottleneck in the CuPc/C60 based organic solar cells. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.