Stable photovoltaic cells based on graphene oxide/indium zinc oxide bilayer anode buffer

We report a solution-processed graphene oxide (GO) functioned as an anode buffer layer in organic photovoltaic cells (OPVs). The OPVs using indium zinc oxide (IZO), IZO/GO, GO/IZO, and poly(3,4-thylenedioxythiophene) doped poly(styrene sulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) as a control device, exhibited the conversion efficiency of 3.4%, 3.5%, 3.9% and 3.4%, respectively. No obvious degradation was discovered for the OPVs with incorporating GO as one of the anode buffer layers after 1 h continuous illumination under AM1.5. On the other hand, after only 1 h continuous illumination, a momentous degradation was observed for the OPVs without the presence of GO. All these results demonstrate that the GO layer plays an important role in the improvement of the stability with conventional device architecture. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.