Enhanced lifetime in unencapsulated organic photovoltaics with air stable electrodes

Organic photovoltaics (OPVs) are realizing power conversion efficiencies that are of interest for commercial production. Consequently, understanding device lifetime and mitigating degradation pathways have become vital to the success of a new industry. Historically, the active organic components are considered vulnerable to photo-oxidation and represent the primary degradation channel. We present several (shelf life and light soaking) studies pointing to the relative stability of the active layers and instabilities in commonly used electrode materials. We show that engineering of the metal electrode and hole/electron injection layer can lead to environmentally stable devices without encapsulation.