Performance improvement of conjugated polymer and ZnO hybrid solar cells using nickel oxide as anode buffer layer

✍ Scribed by Tan, H. R. ;Zhang, X. W. ;Tan, F. R. ;Gao, H. L. ;Yin, Z. G. ;Bai, Y. M. ;Zhang, X. L. ;Qu, S. C.

• Book ID: 105366562
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 687 KB
• Volume: 208
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0031-8965
• DOI: 10.1002/pssa.201127227

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

The open‐circuit voltage of hybrid solar cells based on ZnO nanoparticles (nc‐ZnO) and conjugated polymer MDMO‐PPV increased significantly by replacing poly(3,4‐ethylenedioxythiophene)‐poly(styrenesulphonate) (PEDOT:PSS) with NiO~x~ as the anode buffer layers. The open‐circuit voltage as high as 0.828 V was obtained at high amount of ZnO (80% in weight) in the photoactive blend. Such improvement could be ascribed to the appropriate energy level of NiO~x~, which allows less energy loss for holes while having a sufficiently high‐conduction band minimum to function as a more efficient electron/exciton blocking layer than PEDOT:PSS. The increase of open‐circuit voltage, as well as photocurrent, resulted in a 42% improvement in power conversion efficiency. The results indicate that nickel oxide has promising potential to increase the performance of hybrid solar cells based on nc‐ZnO.