High quality transparent conductive electrodes in organic photovoltaic devices

The use of indium tin oxide (ITO) in conjunction with polymeric substrates requires deposition at low temperatures or room temperature, and with a limited or no thermal treatment. This process results in high resistivity materials. To achieve practical resistivity levels, we replaced ITO, the workhorse in organic optoelectronic devices, with an ITO/Ag/ITO tri-layer anode. This material yielded the desired electrical properties without a significant effect on its optical properties. For example, a sheet resistance of 15 Ω/□ and an optical transmission of 90% at 550 nm were obtained for a tri-layer film in which thickness of each ITO layer is 50 nm and the Ag layer thickness is 8 nm. The use of these tri-layer anodes in CuPc-C₆₀-based organic solar cells led to an increase in the fill factor under illumination, and thus an improvement of the external power conversion efficiency.