Robust and Sustainable Indium Anode Leading to Efficient and Stable Organic Solar Cells.

Xiang, Jiale; Liu, Zhi-Xi; Chen, Hongzheng; Li, Chang-Zhi · Adv Mater · 2023

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

The fast degradation of the charge-extraction interface at indium tin oxide (ITO) poses a significant obstacle to achieving long-term stability for organic solar cells (OSCs). Herein, a sustainable approach for recycling non-sustainable indium to construct efficient and stable OSCs and scale-up modules is developed. It is revealed that the recovered indium chloride (InCl<sub>3</sub> ) from indium oxide waste can be applied as an effective hole-selective interfacial layer for the ITO electrode (noted as InCl<sub>3</sub> -ITO anode) through simple aqueous fabrication, facilitating not only energy level alignment to photoactive blends but also mitigating parasitic absorption and charge recombination losses of the corresponding OSCs. As a result, OSCs and modules consisting of InCl<sub>3</sub> -ITO anodes achieve remarkable power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) of 18.92% and 15.20% (active area of 18.73 cm<sup>2</sup> ), respectively. More importantly, the InCl<sub>3</sub> -ITO anode can significantly extend the thermal stability of derived OSCs, with an extrapolated T<sub>80</sub> lifetime of ≈10 000 h.