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Chinese scientists have fabricated an organic solar cell based on a hole transport layer of indium tin oxide modified with an interfacial layer of recycled indium chloride (InCl3).
Scientists at Zhejiang University (China) have fabricated an organic solar cell (OSC) based on an indium tin oxide (ITO) hole transport layer (HTL) modified with an indium chloride (InCl3) interfacial layer. recycling.
The recycled material appears to offer comparable or better performance than indium tin oxide (ITO)-based HTLs or those made with PEDOT:PSS, a polymer known for its low-cost and easy-to-prepare properties.
“We have devised a new method to solve the pressing problems related to unsustainable indium tin oxide (ITO) depletion and its unstable charge extraction interface for solar cells as well as a wide range of optoelectronics,” he told pv magazine lead author of the research, Chang-Zhi Li. “The fabrication of a thin InCl3 layer could avoid the use of PEDOT:PSS hole transporter materials. Also, this InCl3-ITO electrode can be recycled.”
According to the researchers, the InCl3-ITO HTL exhibits almost identical transmittance spectra to HTLs made with ITO alone and a higher performance than PEDOT:PSS.
They built the solar cell with a glass and ITO substrate, the InCl3-ITO HTL, a bulk heterojunction (BHJ) structure, an electron transport layer (ETL) based on a conductive fullerene surfactant known as Bis-FIMG and a silver metallic contact.
The device was tested under lighting conditions and its performance was compared with that of two reference solar cells using ITO-based HTL and PEDOT:PSS, respectively. The InCl3-ITO based cell achieved a power conversion efficiency of 18.92%, an open circuit voltage of 0.88 V and a short circuit current of 26.12 mA/cm2, as well as a fill factor of 79.34.
The PEDOT:PSS-based cell achieved an efficiency of 18.39%, an open circuit voltage of 0.88 V, a short circuit current of 25.24 mA/cm2, and a fill factor of 79.57. The ITO-only device achieved an efficiency of 16.08%, an open-circuit voltage of 0.85 V, a short-circuit current of 24.88 mA/cm2, and a fill factor of 73.10.
Furthermore, the scientists found that the InCl3-ITO-based cell was able to retain around 90% of its initial efficiency after 1,000 h. "In stark contrast, PEDOT:PSS/ITO-based CSOs dramatically declined to 78% of baseline PCE in less than 100 h," they stated.
They also expanded the technology using an aqueous immersion process and built a larger device with an active area of ??18.73 cm2 that achieved a power conversion efficiency of 15.2%. “These results represent the highest level of performance of OSC binaries and modules to date,” they stated. "Interestingly, InCl3 -ITO remained stable with the surface energies merely changed under continuous annealing." |
