Preparation of hierarchical flower-like nickel sulfide as hole transporting material for organic solar cells via a one-step solvothermal method

In this work, nickel sulfide (NiS) with a mesoporous network was prepared through a simple solvothermal approach. The influences of various contents of the sulfur source on the morphological changes were examined. Finally, the resultant NiS doped with various contents of sulfur were used as hole-transport layers (HTLs) for the application to organic solar cells (OSCs). Based on our knowledge of the implementation of OSCs, NiS-based HTLs are used for the first time in this paper. The OSCs developed with NiS_2.0 (NiS doped with 2.0 g of thioacetamide (sulfur source)) HTL showed a higher PCE response, at 2.28% than those fabricated with NiS_1.0 (NiS doped with 1.0 g of thioacetamide), NiS_1.5, (NiS doped with 1.5 g of thioacetamide), and NiS_2.5 (NiS doped with 2.5 g of thioacetamide), which only showed 1.38%, 1.88%, and 1.96%, respectively. Besides this improved photovoltaic response, it also demonstrated a superior reproducibility with a high degree of control over the environmental stability, i.e., 360 h, as compared to the bare PEDOT:PSS HTL-based OSCs, which showed just 240 h.