Inorganic and organic co-modification of heterojunction interface in polymer/ZnO array hybrid solar cells

In this work, we developed a general and feasible method to improve both V-oc and J(sc) in polymer/ZnO nanrod array (ZnO-NRA) hybrid solar cells (HSCs) through modification of the heterojunction interface by using a combination of inorganic and organic methods. First, homogeneous ZnO core/shell array (CSA), in which ZnO nanorods in array served as the core and ZnO quantum dot (QD) films acted as shells, was synthesized by inorganic modification. Next, the ZnO-CSA was modified with organic molecules (Z907) on QD shell surfaces by a solvothermal method. After co-modification of the polymer/ZnO-NRA heterojunction interfaces by the QD shells and organic molecules, the device efficiency improved by 4.8 times compared with that of pristine ZnO-NRA based solar cells. Our results indicate that a higher efficiency of HSCs can be realized by inorganic and organic co-modification of their heterojunction interfaces.