Chemisorption-Induced Robust and Homogeneous Tungsten Disulfide Interlayer Enables Stable PEDOT-Free Organic Solar Cells with Over 19% Efficiency
Xiaohui Ma, Tao Li, Gang Song, Zhicai He, Yong Cao
Abstract
Construction of a high-quality charge transport layer (CTL) with intimate contact with the substrate via tailored interface engineering is crucial to increase the overall charge transfer kinetics and stability for a bulk-heterojunction (BHJ) organic solar cell (OSC). Here, we demonstrate a surface chemistry strategy to achieve a homogeneous composite hole transport layer (C-HTL) with robust substrate contact by self-assembling two-dimensional tungsten disulfide (WS 2 ) nanosheets on a thin molybdenum oxide (MoO 3 ) film-evaporated indium tin oxide (ITO) substrate. It is found that over such a well-defined C-HTL, WS 2 is homogeneously tethered on the ITO/MoO 3 substrate stemming from the strong electronic coupling interaction between the building blocks, which enables a favorable interfacial configuration in terms of uniformity. As a result, the D18:L8-BO-based OSC with C-HTL exhibits a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 19.23%, an 11% improvement over the WS 2 -based control device, and the highest efficiency among single-junction PEDOT-free binary BHJ OSCs.