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Stability study of thermal cycling on organic solar cells

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Abstract

We present a side-by-side comparison of the stability of three different types of benchmark solution-processed organic solar cells (OSCs), subject to thermal cycling stress conditions. We study the in situ performance during 5 complete thermal cycles between −100 and 80 °C and find that all the device types investigated exhibit superior stability, albeit with a distinct temperature dependence of device efficiency. After applying a much harsher condition of 50 thermal cycles, we further affirm the robustness of the OSC against thermal cycling stress. Our results suggest that OSCs could be a promising candidate for applications with large variations and rapid change in the operating temperature such as outer space applications. Also, a substantial difference in the efficiency drops from high to low temperature for different systems is observed. It suggests that maintaining optimum performance with minimal variations with operating temperature is a key challenge to be addressed for such photovoltaic applications.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors would like to acknowledge the funding support from the Welsh Assembly Government funded Sêr Cymru Solar Project, the European Commission’s CHEETAH Project (FP7-Energy-2013—Grant No. 609788) and EPSRC Grant Nos. EP/M025020/1 and EP/K030671/1. ZL thanks the Welsh Assembly Government Sêr Cymru II fellowship scheme for funding.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. SPECIFIC, College of Engineering, Bay Campus, Swansea University, Swansea, SA1 8EN, UK

    Harrison Ka Hin Lee, James R. Durrant, Zhe Li & Wing Chung Tsoi

  2. Department of Chemistry, Centre for Plastic Electronics, Imperial College London, London, SW7 2AZ, UK

    James R. Durrant

  3. School of Engineering, Cardiff University, Cardiff, CF24 3AA, UK

    Zhe Li

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  1. Harrison Ka Hin Lee
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  2. James R. Durrant
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Correspondence to Zhe Li or Wing Chung Tsoi.

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Lee, H.K.H., Durrant, J.R., Li, Z. et al. Stability study of thermal cycling on organic solar cells. Journal of Materials Research 33, 1902–1908 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2018.167

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