Organic photovoltaic materials are known to be rather unstable in air, being particularly susceptible to photo-degradation induced by oxygen and moisture. Moreover, the material for the low work function electrode is usually chosen from meters like Al...
Organic photovoltaic materials are known to be rather unstable in air, being particularly susceptible to photo-degradation induced by oxygen and moisture. Moreover, the material for the low work function electrode is usually chosen from meters like Al and Ca, in order to minimize the electron injection barrier and to maximize when exposed to air. This leads to the formation of thin insulating oxide barriers, hindering electric conduction and collection of the charger carriers. Besides, it has been reported that water can affect the interface between the metallic contact and organic semiconductors by electrochemical process that caused delamination of the electrode. In spite of the fact that the degradation effect is significantly decreased when conjugated polymers are mixed with fullerene, organic solar cells usually do not operate for more than a few days in air. Therefore, appropriate encapsulation in mandatory for organic photovoltaic devices.
In order to prevent the ingression of moisture and oxygen into organic layer, SiNx passivation layer was grown by a specially designed hot-wire chemical vapor deposition (HW-CVD). Even at low substrate temperature, two-layer SiNx (400 nm) film and SiNx/DLC films prepared by HWCVD exhibited water vapor transmission rate (WVTR) of 0.06 g/day-m2 and 0.13 g/day-m2. The normalized efficiency of OSCs device passivated with a two-layer SiNx and SiNx/DLC multi-layer films were much longer than that of single layer SiNx with sample. We suggested possibility of long-lifetime with optimized SiNx encapsulation for OSCs such as controlling defects.