Study of interface properties in CuPc based hybrid inorganic–organic solar cells

Abstract

Metal-substituted phthalocyanine thin films such as copper-phthalocyanine (CuPc) are often used as photo-active and hole transporting layers (HTLs) in fully organic photovoltaic devices. In this work, CuPc is vacuum sublimated on an electron acceptor layer of mesoporous titania (TiO₂) for the formation of hybrid TiO₂:CuPc solar cell devices. The performance of these hybrid solar cell devices was demonstrated without and with dye sensitization at the TiO₂:CuPc interface. The charge separation and photocurrent contribution at the interfaces in these multilayer hybrid devices was studied by using a variety of optoelectrical and photophysical characterization techniques. It is important to understand the fundamental interface properties of these multilayer hybrid solar cell devices for optimized performance.