ABSTRACT
One of the remaining challenges for the commercialization of organic photovoltaics (OPVs) is their unknown and/or insufficient device reliability. Fundamental insights into the failure mechanisms gathered in the last years paved the way toward the current state-of-the-art result of over 10 years of operational lifetime. Despite the remarkable progress in the last years, our understanding of device failure and methodology to establish device lifetime remains limited and sometimes even incoherent. To overcome these challenges, the topic of device stability is poised to become one of the most critical aspects of OPV research and development. This chapter first presents to the reader a comprehensive review of our current understanding of failure mechanisms and their mitigation routes. This is followed by a summary of operational lifetime studies to highlight the progress and remaining challenges in the field.
