Roles of thermally-induced vertical phase segregation and crystallization on the photovoltaic performance of bulk heterojunction inverted polymer solar cells

Brief 160 °C annealing treatments dramatically enhanced the performance of bulk heterojunction inverted polymer solar cells with an ITO/ZnO/P3HT:PCBM/MoO3/Ag structure. The influence of such treatments on cell performance has been correlated to vertical phase segregation and crystallization within the photoactive layer of such cells. The photoactive layer, comprised of a mixture of P3HT and PCBM deposited on ZnO, was annealed for 10–30 min at 160 °C. Depth profiling with X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) revealed that such annealing resulted in enrichment of the P3HT concentration near the ZnO layer, particularly after 20 and 30 min of annealing. Crystallization of P3HT was detected by X-ray diffraction (XRD) analyses after 10 to 30 min of such annealing, with little difference in the extent of crystallization detected over this time frame. It was found that vertical segregation does not seem to play a role as significant as that of crystallization on cell performance.