Effect of Interlayers on the Performance of Organic Photovoltaic Cells

Due to its economic superiority and modest output performance, organic photovoltaic (OPV) has achieved amazing development in solar power generation over the previous few decades. By integrating different intermediate layers, the efficiency of a traditional OPV cell can be greatly boosted. In this paper, GPVDM software is used to analyze the electrical and optical performances of single junction OPV cell with organic and oxide interlayers under AM 1.5 illumination. Extensive investigation of the simulated results reveals that when an oxide layer such as ZnO is inserted as a hole transport layer above the active layer, the power conversion efficiency (PCE) becomes 4.74 %, whereas the PCE of a PEDOT:PSS interlayer based OPV cell is 4.28 %. Additionally, the short circuit current density of an OPV cell having ZnO interlayer has been found to be 11.96 A/cm
²
. This shows 10% improvement in efficiency compared to when PEDOT:PSS is used as the interlayer. This information will be helpful in choosing appropriate interlayers for OPV cells.