ZnO Electron Transport Layers for Scalable Nonfullerene Acceptor-Based Organic Photovoltaics: Assessing the Role of Processing Technique on Device Performance and Stability
and a maximum power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 13.8%. Furthermore, green solvent and ambient air slot-die coated OPVs employing sputtered ZnO ETLs reached an average PCE of 13.9%, demonstrating the scalability of the method. Importantly, the sputtered ZnO-based devices also exhibited superior long-term stability, showing only a 10% drop in PCE after 1000 h upon exposure to illumination. These improvements are attributed to reduced shunt pathways and mitigated trap-assisted recombination, yielding stability comparable to those based on high-quality atomic layer deposited ZnO ETLs. Moreover, OPVs with sputtered ZnO consistently outperform those with solution-processed ZnO ETLs for other active layer systems, demonstrating the highest PCE of 15.9% for inverted PM6:L8-BO devices. This work highlights the potential of sputter-deposited ZnO ETLs for large-scale inverted OPVs with exceptional efficiency and stability.
Authors
- Catarina G. Ferreira (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4088-1952)
- Joel D. Cox (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5954-6038)
- Eswaran Jayaraman (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5476-8953)
- Chun Yuen Ho (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6045-4715)
- Zheshen Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8381-1620)
- Jakob Kjelstrup‐Hansen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4482-4979)
- Andrei Chumakov (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3195-9356)
- Um Kanta Aryal (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6432-2530)
- Kun Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0729-2678)
- Oier Bikondoa (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9004-9032)
- Florian Zimmermann (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7398-7350)
- Abhinav Chandel (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-3656-6746)
- Vida Turkovic
- Chao Ping Liu
- Zhi Hua Ye
- Thomas Riedl
- Katarzyna Janik
- N Asger Mortensen
- Morten Madsen
Institutions
- University of Wuppertal (DE)
- University of Southern Denmark (DK)
- Aarhus University (DK)
- Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY (DE)
- European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (FR)
- Shantou University (CN)
- University of Warwick (GB)
Publication Details
- Journal
- ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces
- Published
- 2026-04-30
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.6c00680
- Primary Topic
- Organic Electronics and Photovoltaics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- Li Ka Shing Foundation
- European Synchrotron Radiation Facility
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Danmarks Frie Forskningsfond
- Danish Eye Research Foundation
- DanScatt
- Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation of Guangdong Province