Enhanced stability in semi-transparent PTB7/PC71BM photovoltaic cells

•Influence of the OPV stability on the penetration of degradation agents as, for instance, moisture.•Performance over time of opaque and semi-transparent PTB7:PC71BM bulk hereto-junction solar cells.•Incorporation of a 1-D multilayer structure to enhance the lifetime of organic cells.

We studied the performance over time of opaque and semi-transparent PTB7:PC71BM bulk hetero-junction solar cells. For unsealed inverted configuration cells we observe that when the isolation from the environment is improved, the degradation observed is dominated by one single exponential decay. We demonstrate that a dielectric multilayer stack of approximately 550 nm provides an isolation that increases the lifetime of the cell close to ten times. In that event the fill factor appears to be the PV parameter dominating cell degradation resulting from a decrease in the shunt resistance. An Impedance analysis we performed indicates that a Warburg element, attributed to the presence of slowly moving charges such as heavy ions, must be included in the description of the experimental data. The contribution from such element increases as the cell degrades in good agreement with a degradation dominated by the corrosive effects from external agents reaching the active layer of the device.

Graphical abstractFigure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload as PowerPoint slide