The manageable formation of the gradient-layered polymer/fullerene blend films via the addition of bathocuproine and their applications in organic solar cells

We report the manageable formation of the gradient-layered poly(3-hexylthiophene) and [6,6]-phenyl C61-butyric acid methyl ester (P3HT/PCBM) blend film by spin coating via introducing bathocuproine (BCP) into the mixed P3HT/PCBM solution. The BCP can improve the aggregation and thereby the preferential precipitation of PCBM during the spin-coating process, leading to the gradient-layered phase separation of P3HT and PCBM. The regular solar cells using the gradient-layered ternary blend films gave poor photovoltaic performance, due to the mismatch between the polarity of the regular-device structure and the vertical composition profile of the ternary blend film. By contrast, in the inverted solar cell, the gradient-layered ternary blend film could provide the increased device performance over the conventional bulk heterojunction binary blend films.