Emerging needs for the large-scale industrialization of organic solar cells require high performance cathode interlayers to facilitate the charge extraction from organic semiconductors. In addition to improving the efficiency, stability and processability issues are major challenges. Herein, we design block copolymers with well controlled chemical composition and molecular weight for cathode interlayer applications. The block copolymer coated cathodes display high optical transmittance and low work function. Conductivity studies reveal that the block copolymer thin film has abundant conductive channels and excellent longitudinal electron conductivity due to the interpenetrating networks formed by the polymer blocks. Applications of the cathode interlayers in organic solar cells provide higher power conversion efficiency and better stability compared to the most widely-applied ZnO counterparts. Furthermore, no post-treatment is needed which enables excellent processability of the block copolymer based cathode interlayer.

对于有机太阳能电池的大规模工业化的新兴需求，需要高性能的阴极夹层，以促进从有机半导体中提取电荷。除了提高效率之外，稳定性和可加工性问题也是主要挑战。本文中，我们设计了具有良好控制的化学组成和分子量的嵌段共聚物，用于阴极夹层应用。嵌段共聚物涂覆的阴极显示出高的透光率和低的功函。电导率研究表明，由于聚合物嵌段形成的互穿网络，嵌段共聚物薄膜具有丰富的导电通道和优异的纵向电子导电性。与最广泛使用的ZnO对应物相比，阴极夹层在有机太阳能电池中的应用提供了更高的功率转换效率和更好的稳定性。此外，不需要后处理，该后处理能够使基于嵌段共聚物的阴极夹层具有优异的可加工性。