Ether chain functionalized fullerene derivatives as cathode interface materials for efficient organic solar cells

Abstract

The electron transport layer (ETL) plays a crucial role on the electron injection and extraction, resulting in balanced charge transporting and reducing the interfacial energy barrier. The interface compatibility and electrical contact via employing appropriate buffer layer at the surface of hydrophobic organic active layer and hydrophilic inorganic electrode are also essential for charge collections. Herein, an ether chain functionalized fullerene derivatives [6,6]-phenyl-C₆₁-butyricacid-(3,5-bis(2-(2-ethoxyethoxy)-ethoxy)-phenyl)-methyl ester (C₆₀-2EPM) was developed to modify zinc oxide (ZnO) in inverted structure organic solar cells (OSCs). The composited ZnO/C₆₀-2EPM interface layer can help to overcome the low interface compatibility between ZnO and organic active layer. By introducing the C₆₀-2EPM layer, the composited fullerene derivatives tune energy alignment and accelerated the electronic transfer, leading to increased photocurrent and power conversion efficiency (PCE) in the inverted OSCs. The PCE based on PTB7-Th:PC₇₁BM was enhance from 8.11% on bare ZnO to 8.38% and 8.65% with increasing concentrations of 2.0 and 4.0 mg/mL, respectively. The fullerene derivatives C₆₀-2EPM was also used as a third compound in P3HT:PC₆₁BM blend to form ternary system, the devices with addition of C₆₀-2EPM exhibited better values than the control device.

Keywords

interface compatibility / functionalized fullerene derivatives / tune energy alignment / third compound / ternary system

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2018YFA0209200), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 21274048). The authors thank the Analytical and Testing Center of Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) for allowing us to use their facilities.

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2018 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature