Powering the Future: A Critical Review of Research Progress in Enhancing Stability of High-Efficiency Organic Solar Cells

Organic solar cells (OSCs) are a promising photovoltaic technology that employs organic semiconductor material as the photoactive layer, which has the unique advantages of light weight, large-area flexible fabrication, low-cost, and semitransparent. In recent years, the performance of OSCs has been significantly improved, and the highest power conversion efficiency has exceeded 19%. Despite the tremendous progress in OSCs, the major bottleneck in realizing the commercialization of OSCs is the device stability. Therefore, reviewing the recent research progress on the stability of high-performance OSCs is urgent and necessary. This review discusses the factors limiting device lifetime, such as metastable morphology, air, irradiation, heat, and mechanical stresses. Additionally, this review presents the research progress over the last 5 years, focusing on enhancing device stability from the perspective of photoactive layers and other functional layers, which includes material design and device engineering, such as solid additives, device fabrication, optimizing buffer layers, using stable electrodes, and encapsulation. Lastly, this review explores current commercialization challenges and prospects, including using advanced machine learning techniques to assist experimental research.