Rutile TiO2 films as electron transport layer in inverted organic solar cell

Abstract

Titanium dioxide (TiO 2 ) thin films were prepared by sol-gel spin coating method and deposited on ITO-coated glass substrates. The effects of different heat treatment annealing temperatures on the phase composition of TiO 2 films and its effect on the optical band gap, morphological, structural as well as using these layers in P3HT:PCBM-based organic solar cell were examined. The results show the presence of rutile phases in the TiO 2 films which were heat-treated for 2h at different temperatures (200 o C, 300 o C, 400 o C, 500 o C and 600 o C). The optical properties of the TiO 2 films have altered by temperature with a slight decrease in the transmittance intensity in the visible region with increasing the temperature. The optical band gap values were found to be in the range of 3.28-3.59eV for the forbidden direct electronic transition and 3.40-3.79eV for the allowed direct transition.TiO 2 layers were used as electron transport layer in inverted organic solar cells and resulted in a power conversion efficiency of 1.59% with short circuit current density of 6.64mA.cm -2 for TiO 2 layer heat-treated at 600 o C.

Futuristic electron transport layer based on multifunctional interactions of ZnO/TCNE for stable inverted organic solar cells

“…At the same time, the ETL also modies the interface between the photoactive layer and the electrode, minimizing interface defects, and charge recombination. 6 To realize a perfect ETL for enhancing the performance of OSCs, numerous materials including n-type metal oxide semiconductors such as titanium oxide (TiO x ), 7,8 Zinc Oxide (ZnO), 9 stannic oxide (SnO 2 ), 10 cesium carbonate (Cs 2 CO 3 ), 11,12 and polymers, carbon-based materials, small-molecules, 13,14 hybrids/composites, 15 and other evolving contestants have been grown-up as ETL in inverted BHJ OSCs. [16][17][18] Among them, ZnO is a more attractive material owing to its excellent optical transparency, relatively high electron mobility, environment-friendly nature, and ease of fabrication.…”

Recent Applications of Carbon Nanotubes in Organic Solar Cells

“…An assortment of ETL materials, including low work function metals or related salts, e.g., Ca ( Anagnostou et al, 2019 ; Ghosekar and Patil, 2019 ; Lian et al, 2019 ; Song et al, 2019 ; Yu et al, 2019 ) and LiF ( Zhao and Alford, 2018 ; Lee et al, 2019 ; Zheng et al, 2019 ; Adedeji et al, 2020 ; Li et al, 2020b ), and n-type semiconducting metal oxides, e.g., ZnO ( Upama et al, 2017 ; Ahmad et al, 2019 ; Frankenstein et al, 2019 ; Zhang X. et al, 2020 ; Usmani et al, 2021 ) and TiO 2 ( Lin et al, 2013 ; Sun et al, 2016 ; Al-hashimi et al, 2018 ; Abdallaoui et al, 2020 ; Chaudhary et al, 2021 ), have been commonly used to fabricate OSCs. However, Ca and LiF are usually deposited by thermal evaporation in a high vacuum environment at high temperature, which is expensive, complicated and incompatible with flexible devices; hence, making them unfavourable.…”

Cathode Interface Layer Based on Organosilica Nanodots for Efficient and Stable Inverted Organic Solar Cells

“…Considering their vital value to the electron extraction process, the cathode interlayer between the active layer and the cathode plays a crucial role in the production of effective and stable OSCs. − However, the types of cathode interface materials that could be applied to high-performance inverted OSCs (i-OSCs) are still very rare, mainly metal oxides such as ZnO − and TiO 2 . , Several amino-containing organic interface materials such as PEI and PEIE have been reported to be used well in fullerene-based OSCs but not in nonfullerene-based OSCs. This is due to unfavorable chemical reactions (the amine group reacts as a nucleophile with the CC linker in non-fullerene acceptors through an addition reaction) .…”