Design and fabrication of nanometric TiO2/Ag/TiO2/Ag/TiO2 transparent conductive electrode for inverted organic photovoltaic cells application

• TiO2/Ag/TiO2/Ag/TiO2 (TATAT) films have been designed and fabricated.
• The optimum thicknesses of Ag and TiO2 layers for TATAT films were determined.
• The optoelectrical properties of optimized TATAT films were investigated.
• Inverted organic photovoltaic cells were fabricated and characterized.
• TATAT films are promising electrode that can be used in organic solar cells.

In this study, transparent conductive TiO2/Ag/TiO2/Ag/TiO2 (TATAT) nano-multilayer system is designed and optimum thickness of TiO2 and Ag layers are calculated. TATAT nano-multilayer films were deposited on glass substrates at room temperature by a thermal evaporation technique. We investigated some electrical, optical and structural properties of optimized TATAT multilayer such as sheet resistance, optical transmittance and the root-mean-square surface roughness. Here, we suggest a very low resistance transparent electrode (2.3 (Ω/□)) with a high transmittance (90%) for optoelectronics applications. Inverted organic photovoltaic cell was fabricated on the TATAT cathode. The fabricated cell with 12 nm of Ag layer shows higher power conversion efficiency (2.68%) compared to that fabricated on the ITO electrode (1.84%). The results show that the TATAT multilayer system is a suitable structure for use as transparent conductive electrode in optoelectronic devices.