Influence of cathode in organic solar cells performance

In this work we have fabricated and characterized organic solar cells (OSC) based on blends of polyhexylthiophene (P3HT) and [6,6]-phenil-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) with two different cathodes: Al and LiF/Al. Current- Voltage (I-V) curves under illumination have been measured and fitted with the standard equivalent circuit in order to extract circuital parameters, such as series and parallel resistances (R_s and R_p) ideality factor (n) and inverse saturation current (I₀). The introduction of a thin layer (0.5 nm) of LiF between active layer and Al increases the open circuit voltage (V_oc) but slightly reduces short current (Isc) and fill factor (FF). The overall result is a slight increase of the efficiency, from 2.53 % to 2.57 %. Circuital parameters have been extracted with two methods (approximated an exact), and results show that structures with LiF layer have lower parasitic effects (lower R_s and higher R_p).