Significance of light-soaking effect in proper analysis of degradation dynamics of organic solar cells

Abstract

Abstract. One of the issues in the organic solar-cell technology that needs attention before mass production is its low long-term stability. These devices need often to be exposed to the light to improve their photovoltaic properties. This effect, known as light soaking, is the cause of challenges related to correct measurements and proper determination of the device lifetime. Lifetime determination and investigation of failure mechanisms of solar-cell devices require reliable measurement approaches. This paper presents the systematic studies on proper analysis of degradation dynamics of organic solar cells (OSCs) taking into account the light-soaking effect.Five groups of organic solar-cell annealed at various conditions (110°C to 170°C and nonannealed) were under investigation for 100 days. Measurement procedure for proper investigation of light-soaking effect is proposed. Solar-cell efficiency improvement, due to light-soaking effect, in range 8% to 27% was observed for as fabricated devices. After 100 days of study, the light soaking-related efficiency improvement increased up to over 100% of initial efficiency. Device lifetimes strongly depend on measurement methods, which were applied. Our results show the importance of taking into account the changes in magnitude of the light-soaking effect in measurements and degradation studies of OSCs. © The Authors. Published by SPIE under aCreative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.

Consensus statement for stability assessment and reporting for perovskite photovoltaics based on ISOS procedures

“…Modifications of a perturb and observe algorithm were suggested for effective MPPT in solar cells exhibiting hysteresis, including extended thresholds for switching the voltage sweep direction 112 and predictive MPPT algorithms with lowered settling times 113,114 .If any form of MPPT is used during an experiment, the hardware and MPPT algorithm should be clearly referenced. Similar to organic solar cells 115 , preconditioning the PSC (with light and/or electrical bias) prior to each J-V scan may affect the outcome and should be reported.…”

ITO Modification for Efficient Inverted Organic Solar Cells

“…For instance, titanium oxide is known as a strong oxidation photocatalyst, which can induce degradation of active layer materials and ruin the photovoltaic performance of the devices even in the presence of trace amounts of oxygen, which are practically unavoidable in plastic solar cells. , Titanium in the high valence state might directly oxidize adjacent organic layers thus leading to a strong interfacial degradation. It has also been recognized that the performance of the solar cells incorporating a TiO x interlayer depends strongly on light soaking, which significantly hampers their practical application. , This problem is known to be even more severe in the case of using ZnO as electron transport layer (ETL) material. − …”