Dielectric interface effects on surface charge accumulation and collection towards high-efficiency organic solar cells

This paper reports the experimental studies on the effects of dielectric thin-film on surface-charge accumulation and collection by using capacitance-voltage (C-V) measurements under photoexcitation. The dielectric thin-films with different surface polarizations are used with inverted device architecture based on the common photovoltaic PTB7:PC₇₁BM film. In the C-V measurements, the peak-voltage shift with light intensity, namely, V_peak shift, is particularly used to determine the surface-charge accumulation. We find that the V_peak shows a smaller shift with light intensity when a higher surface polarization of dielectric thin-film is used. This means that a higher surface polarization of dielectric thin-film can decrease the surface-charge accumulation at electrode interface. However, a lower surface polarization of dielectric thin-film leads to a larger shift with light intensity. This implies that a lower surface polarization of dielectric thin-film corresponds to a larger surface-charge accumulation. This experimental finding indicates that dielectric thin-film plays an important role in the surface-charge accumulation and collection in the generation of photocurrent in organic solar cells. We demonstrate that the device performance can reach the power conversion efficiency of 8.7% when a higher dielectric PFN is used to enhance the surface-charge collection based on the inverted design of ITO/PFN/PTB7:PC₇₁BM/MoO₃/Ag.