The effect of intense pulsed light (IPL) annealing on the fabrication of OPV buffer layers was investigated. In order to avoid causing damage with the high intensity light, an inverted OPV structure was used. Sol-gel type ZnO was annealed by IPL and used as an electron extraction layer. The effects of controlling a variety of parameters, including the voltage, pulse duration, and distance between the substrate and the light source, on the device fabrication process were studied. In order to obtain better energy level matching between the work function of the cathode and the LUMO of the semiconducting acceptor, polyethylenimine ethoxylated was used. The most homogenous ZnO nanoparticle layer was obtained with 30 IPL pulse treatments, resulting in an optimum electron extraction layer. IPL annealed ZnO devices showed enhanced performance compared to thermally annealed ZnO devices. OPV devices with IPL-treated ZnO coated with PEIE showed a similar to 10% enhancement in the conversion efficiency compared to devices with thermally annealed ZnO coated with PEIE. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.