Copper antimony sulfide (CuSbS₂) has attracted significant interest as an earth-abundant photovoltaic absorber. However, the efficiency of the current CuSbS₂ photovoltaic device is too low to meet the requirement of a large-scale application. In this study, selenylation was introduced to optimize the band structure and improve the device performance. Selenized CuSbS₂ [CuSbS₂(Se)] films were realized using porous CuSbS₂ films prepared by spray deposition with a post-treatment in Se vapor. The as-prepared CuSbS₂(Se) films exhibited a compact structure. X-ray diffraction and elemental analysis confirmed the effective doping of Se into the lattice by substituting a part of S in CuSbS₂. Elemental analysis revealed a gradient distribution for Se from the top surface to the deeper regions, and the substitution rate was very high (>39%). Dark J–V characteristics and AC impedance spectroscopy analysis showed that selenylation significantly reduced the carrier recombination center. As a result, the selenized CuSbS₂ device exhibited a significant efficiency improvement from 0.12% to 0.90%, which is much higher than that of the simply annealed device (0.46%), indicating this technique is a promising approach to improve the performance of CuSbS₂ solar cells.

Silver nanowire films are good candidates to be used as transparent conductive films that could be widely utilized in organic photoelectronic devices such as polymer solar cells. However, their application is usually limited, as they are mainly used as top electrode materials; otherwise, they would be prone to complex transferring processes. In this study, we successfully prepared device-level ZnO-covered silver nanowire (AgNWs/ZnO) films. ZnO was prepared by a spray pyrolysis method using zinc-ammonia solution at a relatively low temperature (95°C). The films showed good adhesive properties to the glass substrate, considering it withstood the process of applying polyimide tapes on the surface and tearing them off more than 100 times. It also exhibited good conductivity (∼24 Ω/sq) with high transmittance in the visible range (>80%). After a simple polish and patterning, AgNWs/ZnO showed a good performance as a sub-electrode for polymer solar cells. The PM6:Y6 devices achieved a high power conversion efficiency of 8.37% with an open-circuit voltage of 0.81 V, a short-circuit current density of 18.18 mA/cm², and a yield of 81.25%. This indicates that the technology has a good prospect of large-scale fabrication of organic photoelectronic devices.