Materials 2012, 5(12), 2521-2536; doi:10.3390/ma5122521
Article

MoO3 Thickness, Thermal Annealing and Solvent Annealing Effects on Inverted and Direct Polymer Photovoltaic Solar Cells

Sylvain Chambon 1 email, Lionel Derue 1 email, Michel Lahaye 2 email, Bertrand Pavageau 3 email, Lionel Hirsch 1 email and Guillaume Wantz 1,* email
1 University Bordeaux, CNRS, IMS, UMR 5218, 33400 Talence, France 2 University Bordeaux, CNRS, ICMCB, UPR 9048, 33600 Pessac, France 3 University Bordeaux, CNRS, RHODIA, LOF, UMR 5258, 33600 Pessac, France
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Received: 1 November 2012; in revised form: 16 November 2012 / Accepted: 19 November 2012 / Published: 27 November 2012
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Photovoltaic Materials 2012)
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Abstract: Several parameters of the fabrication process of inverted polymer bulk heterojunction solar cells based on titanium oxide as an electron selective layer and molybdenum oxide as a hole selective layer were tested in order to achieve efficient organic photovoltaic solar cells. Thermal annealing treatment is a common process to achieve optimum morphology, but it proved to be damageable for the performance of this kind of inverted solar cells. We demonstrate using Auger analysis combined with argon etching that diffusion of species occurs from the MoO3/Ag top layers into the active layer upon thermal annealing. In order to achieve efficient devices, the morphology of the bulk heterojunction was then manipulated using the solvent annealing technique as an alternative to thermal annealing. The influence of the MoO3 thickness was studied on inverted, as well as direct, structure. It appeared that only 1 nm-thick MoO3 is enough to exhibit highly efficient devices (PCE = 3.8%) and that increasing the thickness up to 15 nm does not change the device performance.
Keywords: organic solar cells; MoO3; diffusion processes; inverted architecture; thermal annealing; solvent annealing

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MDPI and ACS Style

Chambon, S.; Derue, L.; Lahaye, M.; Pavageau, B.; Hirsch, L.; Wantz, G. MoO3 Thickness, Thermal Annealing and Solvent Annealing Effects on Inverted and Direct Polymer Photovoltaic Solar Cells. Materials 2012, 5, 2521-2536.

AMA Style

Chambon S, Derue L, Lahaye M, Pavageau B, Hirsch L, Wantz G. MoO3 Thickness, Thermal Annealing and Solvent Annealing Effects on Inverted and Direct Polymer Photovoltaic Solar Cells. Materials. 2012; 5(12):2521-2536.

Chicago/Turabian Style

Chambon, Sylvain; Derue, Lionel; Lahaye, Michel; Pavageau, Bertrand; Hirsch, Lionel; Wantz, Guillaume. 2012. "MoO3 Thickness, Thermal Annealing and Solvent Annealing Effects on Inverted and Direct Polymer Photovoltaic Solar Cells." Materials 5, no. 12: 2521-2536.

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