title: Improved uniformity in high-performance organic photovoltaics enabled by (3-aminopropyl)triethoxysilane cathode functionalization.
abstract: Organic photovoltaics have the potential to serve as lightweight, low-cost, mechanically flexible solar cells. However, losses in efficiency as laboratory cells are scaled up to the module level have to date impeded large scale deployment. Here, we report that a 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTES) cathode interfacial treatment significantly enhances performance reproducibility in inverted high-efficiency PTB7:PC71BM organic photovoltaic cells, as demonstrated by the fabrication of 100 APTES-treated devices versus 100 untreated controls. The APTES-treated devices achieve a power conversion efficiency of 8.08 ± 0.12% with histogram skewness of -0.291, whereas the untreated controls achieve 7.80 ± 0.26% with histogram skewness of -1.86. By substantially suppressing the interfacial origins of underperforming cells, the APTES treatment offers a pathway for fabricating large-area modules with high spatial performance uniformity.
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and Argonne-Northwestern Solar Energy Research (ANSER) Center, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA. m-hersam@northwestern.edu.
authors.forename: Kyle A
authors.initials: KA
authors.lastname: Luck
authors.forename: Tejas A
authors.initials: TA
authors.lastname: Shastry
authors.forename: Stephen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Loser
authors.forename: Gabriel
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Ogien
authors.forename: Tobin J
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: Marks
authors.forename: Mark C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Hersam