The Critical Role of Processing and Morphology in Determining Degradation Rates in Polymer Solar Cells

With rapid increase in the efficiencies of polymer solar cells (PSCs) in the last few years, the issue of device stability is taking center stage in organic photovoltaic research. In this work, the effects of oxygen and light on the degradation of charge-transport properties of the bulk polymer active layer are studied over short timescales. It is shown that although different processing techniques produce similar efficiencies for pristine devices, they result in different degradation rates. This variation in degradation rates is primarily due to slightly different morphology parameters, such as molecular packing or disorder in the film. Investigation reveals that the choice of processing for the devices should consider degradation rates as a critical parameter, not just the efficiencies of the pristine devices. It was found that degradation starts with broadening of the effective density of states due to photo-oxidation. Both transient absorption and charge extraction by linearly increasing voltage (CELIV) measurements show increase in disorder in the films with progressive degradation. It is suggested that annealing provides the necessary thermal energy to reduce the trap states by flattening out the energy landscape of the pristine films, improving not only the efficiency, as reported previously, but also slowing the degradation rates.