Experimental Analysis of the Potential Induced Degradation Effect on Organic Solar Cells

WOS: 000408550800001Renewable energy applications are increasing daily, and solar electricity, in the form of photovoltaics, is getting more and more important worldwide. As photovoltaics are connected both in series and in parallel, the panels are exposed to high potentials compared to the ground; thus, high voltage stress (HVS) occurs. The scope of this paper is to analyze experimentally the potential induced degradation (PID) in organic solar cells. To that end, organic solar cells are manufactured and are then undergone a series of voltage-dependent degradation and time-dependent voltage degradation tests. In addition to that, they are also exposed to gaseous oxygen, oxygen plasma, air degradation, and annealing, and the degradation effects are compared with PID results. From the analysis, it is apparent that annealing, air, gaseous oxygen, and oxygen plasma degradation have similar effects with PID, while due to simple diode characteristics, organic cells proved to be relatively durable to potential induced degradation. At low voltages (10 V), the organic cells withstood degradation adequately, with a drop of 23% in their initial efficiency. As voltage increased, the degradation rate increased considerably reaching a 93% efficiency drop when 30 V was applied for 20 minutes

Investigation of cell-level potential-induced degradation mechanisms on perovskite, dye-sensitized and organic photovoltaics

The study focuses on the effect of bias voltage degradation or Potential Induced Degradation (PID) on the efficiency of perovskite (PSCs), dye-sensitized (DSSCs) and organic (OPVs) solar cells. For the PID study, voltage-depended and time-depended degradation tests have been carried out at solar cell level; the cells were fabricated and tested in the same conditions. Furthermore, the solar cells were exposed to both, annealing and cooling tests in order tp highlight the various PID characteristics. Thus, the mechanisms induced during the PID degradation were thoroughly investigated. Results revealed that DSSCs are far more vulnerable to voltage degradation than other solar cell technologies. The current work illustrates that OPV solar cells can be considered as voltage durable compared to PSCs and DSSCs ones. OPV solar cells lost 23% of their initial efficiency whereas PSC and DSSC cells were entirely degraded after the application of 5.5 V and 2.5 V voltage respectively. Furthermore, in contrast to OPV, DSSCs and PSCs did not exhibit charging effect when a 5 V voltage was applied. © 2019 International Solar Energy Societ