Improvement of both efficiency and working lifetime in organic photovoltaic devices by using bathophenanthroline/tin(IV) phthalocyanine dichloride as bilayer exciton blocking layers

We demonstrate that the improvement of both efficiency and lifetime of organic photovoltaic (OPV) devices by employing thinner bathophenanthroline (Bphen) and thicker tin(IV) phthalocyanine dichloride (SnCl2Pc) as the bilayer exciton blocking layers (EBLs), where Bphen and SnCl2Pc acts as the photogenerated exciton blocking layer and optical spacer, respectively. The thicker SnCl2Pc layer can be adopted due to its high electron mobility and aligned lowest unoccupied molecular orbital with the acceptor. The OPV device with such a bilayer EBL leads to an increase by 27% in power conversion efficiency compared to the device with a traditional bathocuproine EBL. Moreover, the lifetime is also improved due to the superior oxygen and moisture diffusion blocking effect of the thick SnCl2Pc layer. The operation mechanism for the improvement in PCE and lifetime was also discussed. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4729146]