The inter-comparability of ageing of organic photovoltaic (OPV) technologies in dark is addressed. Four primary factors that affect the reproducibility of the ageing rate determination and inter-comparison are discussed: production/encapsulation of the samples, current-voltage (IV) characterization, testing conditions for ageing and lifetime determination from a decay curve. Results of inter-laboratory ageing studies of roll-to-roll and spin coated samples with correspondingly flexible plastic packaging and glass stored in dark conditions among 7 laboratories are presented. ISOS test conditions, proposed recently as guiding protocols for testing OPV stability, are applied in the study. The reproducibility of the performance versus the production and encapsulation techniques is firstly studied. The results reveal a significant improvement in the reproducibility when going from manual spin coating to roll-to-roll production. Furthermore, the reproducibility of current-voltage (IV) measurement and preconditioning (light soaking treatments) are addressed. Additionally, the inter-comparison of the degradation rates of the samples aged under three different dark test conditions (ambient, dry/heat, damp heat) reported by different groups are analyzed revealing a reasonable agreement. Finally, a logarithmic diagram for OPV lifetime associated with common time units is proposed that allows conveniently categorizing and intercomparing the stability performance of different samples aged under different test conditions. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

cited By 10