Fabrication of highly reproducible polymer solar cells using ultrasonic substrate vibration posttreatment

Organic solar cells are usually nonreproducible due to the presence of defects in the structure of their constituting thin films. To minimize the density of pinholes and defects in PEDOT:PSS, which is the hole transporting layer of a standard polymer solar cell, i.e., glass/ITO/PEDOT: PSS/P3HT:PCBM/Al, and to reduce scattering in device performance, wet spun-on PEDOT: PSS films are subjected to imposed ultrasonic substrate vibration posttreatment (SVPT). The imposed vibration improves the mixing and homogeneity of the wet spun-on films, and consequently the nanostructure of the ensuing thin solid films. For instance, our results show that by using the SVPT, which is a mechanical, single-step and low-cost process, the average power conversion efficiency of 14 identical cells increases by 25% and the standard deviation decreases by 22% indicating that the device photovoltaic performance becomes more consistent and significantly improved. This eliminates several tedious and expensive chemical and thermal treatments currently performed to improve the cell reproducibility. (C) The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.