Abstract
The development of high-performance organic solar cells (OSCs) with high
operational stability is essential to accelerate their
commercialization. Unfortunately, there is currently a lack of detailed
understanding of the origin of instabilities in state-of-the-art OSCs
based on bulk heterojunction (BHJ) featuring non-fullerene acceptors
(NFAs). Herein, we developed NFA-based OSCs using different charge
extraction interlayer materials and studied their storage, thermal, and
operational stabilities. Despite the high power conversion efficiency
(PCE) of the OSCs (17.54%), we found that cells featuring
self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) as hole-extraction interlayers
exhibited poor stability. The time required for these OSCs to reach 80%
of their initial performance (T80) was only 6 h under continuous thermal
stress at 85 °C in a nitrogen atmosphere and 1 h under maximum power
point tracking (MPPT) in a vacuum. Inserting MoOx between ITO and SAM
enhanced the T80 to 50 h and ~15 h after the thermal and
operational stability tests, respectively, while maintaining a PCE of
16.9%. Replacing the organic PDINN electron transport layer with ZnO
NPs further enhances the cells’ thermal and operational stability,
boosting the T80 to 1000 and 170 h, respectively. Our work reveals the
synergistic role of charge interlayers and device architecture in
developing efficient and stable OSCs.