Efficient organic-inorganic hybrid cathode interfacial layer enabled by polymeric dopant and its application in large-area polymer solar cells

An organic-inorganic hybrid cathode interfacial layer (CIL) was developed by doping ZnO with the naphthalene-diimide based derivative NDI-PFNBr. It was found the resulting organic-inorganic hybrid CIL showed apparently improved conductivity and could act as an effective cathode interlayer to modify indium tin oxide (ITO) transparent electrodes. As a result, by employing the blend of PTB7-Th:PC71BM as the photoactive layer, the inverted polymer solar cells (PSCs) exhibited a remarkable enhancement of power conversion efficiency (PCE) from 8.52% for the control device to 10.04% for the device fabricated with the hybrid CIL. Moreover, all device parameters were simultaneously improved by using this hybrid CIL. The improved open-circuit voltage (V-OC) was attributed to the reduced work function of the ITO cathode, whereas the enhancements in fill factor (FF) and short-circuit current density (J(SC)) were assigned to the increased conductivity and more effective charge extraction and collection at interface. Encouragingly, when the thickness of the hybrid CIL was increased to 80 nm, the resulting device could still keep a PCE of 8.81%, exhibiting less thickness dependence. Considering these advantages, 16 and 93 cm(2) large-area PSCs modules were successfully fabricated from the hybrid CIL by using doctor-blade coating techniques and yielded a remarkable PCE of 8.05% and 4.49%, respectively. These results indicated that the hybrid CIL could be a promising candidate to serve as the cathode interlayer for high-performance large-area inverted PSCs.