Extremely stable all solution processed organic tandem solar cells with TiO2/GO recombination layer under continuous light illumination

Abstract

One approach to harvest a wide solar spectral solar energy is to stack two solar cells with different absorption characteristics in a tandem cell architecture. Herein, solution processed tandem solar cells, with highly transparent titanium oxide (TiO2) and graphene oxide (GO) as an efficient recombination layer, were designed, fabricated and characterized. We have adopted poly[(4,4'-bis(3-ethylhexyl)dithieno[3,2-b:''3'-d]silole)-2,6-diyl-alt-(2,5-(3-(2-ethylhexyl)thiophen-2-yl)thiazolo[5,4-d]thiazole]:indene-C60 bisadduct (PSEHTT:ICBA) and poly[(4,4'-bis(2-ethylhexyl)dithieno[3,2-b:2',3'-d]silole)-2,6-diyl-alt-(2,1,3-benzothiadiazole)-4,7-diyl]:[6,6]-phenyl-C70 butyric acid methyl ester (PSBTBT:PC70BM) as the active layers for the front and rear cells, respectively. The TiO2/GO serves as an electron and hole collecting and recombination layer. The tandem solar cells showed a high open circuit voltage (VOC) 1.62 V, a moderate short circuit current density (JSC) 8.23 mA cm(-2), fill factor (FF) 62.98%, leading to the power conversion efficiency of 8.40%. The obtained VOC value of tandem solar cells is ideal for the summation of VOCs attained from front and rear cells and it is evident that our tandem solar cells are well connected in series. Moreover, this tandem cell exhibits a 20% drop in conversion efficiency under continuous AM illumination for 2880 h.