The Influence of Deposition Rates on Properties of AlPcCl Thin Films and on the Performance of Planar Organic Solar Cells

The performance of organic photovoltaic cells depends on different properties of the organic materials, such as carrier mobility, band structure, morphology, and crystallinity. For AlPcCl, it is shown that these properties are dependent on the layer deposition rates. As the deposition rate increases, the surface roughness of AlPcCl layers decreases. In contrast, the crystallinity of the layers increases as the deposition rate decreases, thereby increasing the hole mobility value. These effects are opposed: the former effect allows higher open circuit voltages to be obtained as the deposition rate increases, whereas the latter increases the short circuit current as the deposition rate decreases. Therefore, there is a trade-off between open and short circuit current values, and it is necessary to find the best deposition rate for AlPcCl. Here, it is shown that the highest mobility carriers in layers deposited slowly allow the use of thicker AlPcCl layers, which permits acceptable open circuit voltage values and optimum photovoltaic cell efficiencies to be obtained. This results in an optimum efficiency value of 3.97% for a 26-nm-thick AlPcCl film that is deposited at 0.02–0.03 nm s−1.