Publication date: 22nd July 2026
Organic solar cells have recently broke the power conversion efficiencies limit of 20 %. This puts extra attention to increasing their stability as their last remaining weak point. Since organic solar cells consist of organic molecules, they are inherently susceptible to degradation via oxygen, light, heat, and humidity, which are all commonly found stresses in their working environment.
Different stabilizing additives, such as antioxidants, radical scavengers, hydroperoxide decomposers, UV absorbers and more, can be incorporated in active layers of organic solar cells to prevent or slow down their degradation. This is both inexpensive and easily upscalable intervention, and it also does not introduce further complexity into the solar cell device architecture.
Here we are presenting our recent results on non-fullerene based solar cells stability improvement using naturally occurring antioxidants that act as singlet oxygen quenchers and radical scavenging compounds in highly efficient organic solar cells. Using fluorescent probes, we also investigate and discuss the dominating degradation mechanisms in these systems.
