Effect of the interfacial materials on the performance of organic photovoltaic cells

Abstract

There are two different architectures for organic solar cells: standard and inverted. They differ according to the role of the lower electrode as a cathode or an anode. In the standard structure, the holes go towards the ITO electrode while in the reverse structure the holes go towards the ITO electrode. Interface materials are located between the active layer and the electrodes. The advantages of these layers is the alignment of energy levels between the active layer, the electrodes and these interface materials in order to facilitate transport of charges to the electrodes and to minimize recombination.The objective of this paper is to obtain by simulation, the electrical characteristics and the behavior of a photovoltaic system by using General-Purpose Photovoltaic Device Model GPVDM software, this according to the variations of the parameters of the model. The comparison of the simulation results of the different structures allowed as choosing an optimized structure with suitable interface materials. The optimized cell is ITO/AZO (40 nm)/P3HT:PCBM (200 nm)/Cu2O (20 nm)/Ag, with the following photovoltaic parameters: PCE = 5%, VOC = 0.6 V, JSC = 12 mA/cm2 and FF = 67.53%.