Inverted organic photovoltaic cells.

The advance in lifestyle, modern industrialization and future technological revolution are always at high expense of energy consumption. Unfortunately, there exist serious issues such as limited storage, high cost and toxic contamination in conventional fossil fuel energy sources. Instead, solar energy represents a renewable, economic and green alternative in the future energy market. Among the photovoltaic technologies, organic photovoltaics (OPVs) demonstrate a cheap, flexible, clean and easy-processing way to convert solar energy into electricity. However, OPVs with a conventional device structure are still far away from industrialization mainly because of their short lifetime and the energy-intensive deposition of top metal electrode. To address the stability and cost issue simultaneously, an inverted device structure has been introduced into OPVs, bridging laboratory research with practical application. In this review, recent progress in device structures, working mechanisms, functions and advances of each component layer as well their correlations with the efficiency and stability of inverted OPVs are reviewed and illustrated.