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Tandem organic solar cells with a large VOC by control of the active-layer concentration

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Abstract

The tandem organic solar cell could absorb the complementarity sunlight spectra by the sub-cells based on the different energy gap of the active-layer materials. In this work, a wide-band gap of the organic material PTB7-Th: PC71BM is used as the front sub-cells active layer, and the narrow-band gap of PTB7-Th: IEICO-4F is used as the rear sub-cells active layer. The front and rear sub-cells present the complementary absorption spectra leading to the sufficiently improvement of the sunlight absorption. MoO3/Au/ZnO multilayer film is the interconnecting layer. ZnO film was prepared by the sputtering method is smaller root-mean-square than that of the film prepared by the solution synthesis, resulting in a good contact interfacial between the sub-cells. This is in favor of the JSC and FF of the tandem organic solar cell. Importantly, the short-circuit current density of the tandem solar cell is handily controlled by the active-layer concentration of the front sub-cell, the tandem cell exhibits an optimal PCE of 11.77% with a large VOC of 1.45 V.

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Acknowledgements

The National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.61704028), the Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province (No.2019J01217).

Funding

The National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 61704028, Qiao Zheng, the Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province, No. 2019J01217, Qiao Zheng.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Physics and Information Engineering, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou, 350108, Fujian Province, People’s Republic of China

    Qiao Zheng, **gang Huang, Pengsen Chen, Shunli Du, Hui Zhou, Quanzhen Sun, Hui Deng, Jionghua Wu, Caixia Zhang & Shuying Cheng

  2. Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Center of Photovoltaic Science and Engineering, Changzhou, 213164, Jiangsu Province, People’s Republic of China

    Qiao Zheng, **gang Huang, Pengsen Chen, Shunli Du, Hui Zhou & Shuying Cheng

Authors
  1. Qiao Zheng
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  2. **gang Huang
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  3. Pengsen Chen
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Contributions

QZ and JH contributed equally to this work. QZ, JH, SD and PC conceived the idea and designed the experiments. JH completed the fabrication and characterization of devices. QZ, JH, SD, PC, HZ, QS, HD, JW, CZ and SC participated in the discussion and revision of the manuscript and data analysis. JH wrote the paper. QZ revised the paper. All authors agreed on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Qiao Zheng.

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Zheng, Q., Huang, J., Chen, P. et al. Tandem organic solar cells with a large VOC by control of the active-layer concentration. Appl. Phys. A 129, 252 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-023-06533-0

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