Abstract
Energy levels and energy level alignment at interfaces play a decisive
role in designing efficient and stable organic solar cells (OSCs). In
this review two usually used technologies in organic photovoltaic
communities for measuring energy levels of organic semiconductors,
photoelectron spectroscopy and electrochemical methods, are introduced,
and the relationships between the values obtained from the corresponding
techniques are compared. The energy level and energy level alignment
across the interfaces involved in solution processed organic
photovoltaics are described, and the corresponding integer charge
transfer model for predicting and explaining energy level alignment are
presented. The effects of the interface properties in designing
efficient binary and ternary OSCs were discussed. The effects of
environmental factors mainly including water vapor, oxygen gas and
thermal annealing on energy levels and energy level alignment involved
in photoactive layers, and the subsequent effects on the corresponding
OSC properties are given.