Organic Solar Cell With Efficiency Over 20% and VOC Exceeding 2.1 V Enabled by Tandem With All-Inorganic Perovskite and Thermal Annealing-Free Process

Adv Sci (Weinh). 2022 Oct;9(28):e2200445. doi: 10.1002/advs.202200445. Epub 2022 Jul 20.

Abstract

Organic solar cells (OSCs) based on polymer donor and non-fullerene acceptor achieve power conversion efficiency (PCE) more than 19% but their poor absorption below 550 nm restricts the harvesting of high-energy photons. In contrast, wide bandgap all-inorganic perovskites limit the absorption of low-energy photons and cause serious below bandgap loss. Therefore, a 2-terminal (2T) monolithic perovskite/organic tandem solar cell (TSC) incorporating wide bandgap CsPbI2 Br is demonstrated as front cell absorber and organic PM6:Y6 blend as rear cell absorber, to extend the absorption of OSCs into high-energy photon region. The perovskite sub-cell, featuring a sol-gel prepared ZnO/SnO2 bilayer electron transporting layer, renders a high open-circuit voltage (VOC ). The VOC is further enhanced by employing thermal annealing (TA)-free process in the fabrication of rear sub-cell, demonstrating a record high VOC of 2.116 V. The TA-free Ag/PFN-Br interface in organic sub-cell facilitates charge transport and restrains nonradiative recombination. Consequently, a remarkable PCE of 20.6% is achieved in monolithic 2T-TSCs configuration, which is higher than that of both reported single junction and tandem OSCs, demonstrating that tandem with wide bandgap all-inorganic perovskite is a promising strategy to improve the efficiency of OSCs.

Keywords: electron transporting layers; energy loss; inter-connecting layers; perovskites/organic tandem solar cells.