Performance of inverted organic solar cell using different metal electrodes

Abstract

Organic solar cell is one of the fastest improving solar cells nowadays with improved power conversion efficiency approaching 10%. Here, we explore the performance of bulk heterojunction solar cell based on poly(3-hexyl thiophene) [P3HT] and [6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester [PCBM] by introducing ZnO nanoparticles buffer layer and appropriately tuning its energy level alignment by using different metal electrodes. The devices performance using two different high work function metal electrodes namely gold and platinum was investigated. The open circuit voltage (Voc) was obviously changed using different metal electrodes. The device with Platinum electrode shows higher Voc (0.2535 V) than the device with gold electrode by a factor of ~2. However, the efficiency was slightly lower than the gold device.