Organic photovoltaic cells fabricated on a SnOx/Ag/SnOx multilayer transparent conducting electrode

Transparent conducting multilayer structured electrode of a few nm Ag layer embedded in tin oxide thin film SnO_x/Ag/SnO_x was fabricated on a glass by RF magnetron sputtering at room temperature. The multilayer of the SnO_x(40 nm)/Ag(11 nm)/SnO_x(40 nm) electrode shows the maximum optical transmittance of 87.3% at 550 nm and a quite low electrical resistivity of 6.5 × 10^− 5 Ω cm, and the corresponding figure of merit (T¹⁰/R_S) is equivalent to 3.6 × 10^− 2 Ω^− 1. A normal organic photovoltaic (OPV) structure of poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrene sulfonate)/polythiophene:phenyl-C60-butyric acid methyl ester/Al was fabricated on glass/SnO_x/Ag/SnO_x to examine the compatibility of OPV as a transparent conducting electrode. Measured characteristic values of open circuit voltage of 0.62 V, saturation current of 8.11 mA/cm² and fill factor of 0.54 are analogous to 0.63 V, 8.37 mA/cm² and 0.58 of OPV on commercial glass/indium tin oxide (ITO) respectively. A resultant power conversion efficiency of 2.7% is also very comparable with the 3.09% of the same OPV structure on the commercial ITO glass as a reference, and which reveals that SnO_x/Ag/SnO_x can be appropriate to OPV solar cells as a sound transparent conducting electrode.