Within bulk heterojunction (BHJ) organic photovoltaic (OPV) devices, photogenerated excitons are extinguished prematurely due to the inherent, simplistic device architectures lacking charge carrier (hole and electron) selectivity at the electrode interface. Moreover, energy is lost due to the high contact resistance between the active semiconducting layer and metal electrode due to their chemical nature. These inherent limitations in OPV systems lead to a decrease in device performance and long-term stability. Recent OPV devices well-exceeded previous performance by incorporating compatible layers of material between the photoactive organic layer and metal electrode. The types of materials used for the interfacial layer includes metals, metal salts, transition metal oxides, doped polymers, fullerene derivatives, conjugated polyelectrolytes, and small molecules. This study primarily focused on air-processed poly(3-hexylthiophene):phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (P3HT:PCBM) inverted OPV devices with a sol-gel processed vanadium oxide (VO<sub>x</sub>) hole-extraction layer. Vanadium oxide is one of the several well-established transition metal oxide materials utilized in organic electronic applications and has shown promising attributes for future commercialization of OPVs. Through morphological analysis techniques, the underlying interfacial domains responsible for long-term stability and consistency in output performance were studied.

Interface engineering of air-processed inverted OPV devices via sol-gel processed vanadium oxide hole-extraction layer

255th National Meeting (2018)

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