Bendable Solar Cells from Stable, Flexible, and Transparent Conducting Electrodes Fabricated Using a Nitrogen-Doped Ultrathin Copper Film

Copper has attracted significant interests as an abundant and low-cost alternative material for flexible transparent conducting electrodes (FTCEs). However, Cu-based FTCEs still present unsolved technical issues, such as their inferior light transmittance and oxidation durability compared to conventional indium tin oxide (ITO) and silver metal electrodes. This study reports a novel technique for fabricating highly efficient FTCEs composed of a copper ultrathin film sandwiched between zinc oxides, with enhanced transparency and antioxidation performances. A completely continuous and smooth copper ultrathin film is fabricated by a simple room-temperature reactive sputtering process involving controlled nitrogen doping (<1%) due to a dramatic improvement in the wettability of copper on zinc oxide surfaces. The electrode based on the nitrogen-doped copper film exhibits an optimized average transmittance of 84% over a spectral range of 380 −1000 nm and a sheet resistance lower than 20 Ω sq⁻¹, with no electrical degradation after exposure to strong oxidation conditions for 760 h. Remarkably, a flexible organic solar cell based on the present Cu-based FTCE achieves a power conversion efficiency of 7.1%, clearly exceeding that (6.6%) of solar cells utilizing the conventional ITO film, and this excellent performance is maintained even in almost completely bent configurations.