Robust and Sustainable Indium Anode Leading to Efficient and Stable Organic Solar Cells

Abstract

The fast degradation of the charge‐extraction interface at indium tin oxide (ITO) poses a significant obstacle to achieving long‐term stability for organic solar cells (OSCs). Herein, a sustainable approach for recycling non‐sustainable indium to construct efficient and stable OSCs and scale‐up modules is developed. It is revealed that the recovered indium chloride (InCl3) from indium oxide waste can be applied as an effective hole‐selective interfacial layer for the ITO electrode (noted as InCl3–ITO anode) through simple aqueous fabrication, facilitating not only energy level alignment to photoactive blends but also mitigating parasitic absorption and charge recombination losses of the corresponding OSCs. As a result, OSCs and modules consisting of InCl3–ITO anodes achieve remarkable power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) of 18.92% and 15.20% (active area of 18.73 cm2), respectively. More importantly, the InCl3–ITO anode can significantly extend the thermal stability of derived OSCs, with an extrapolated T80 lifetime of ≈10 000 h.