Current Collecting Grids for R2R Processed Organic Solar Cells

Abstract

Exposure to highly focussed flash light (photonic flash sintering) has been developed as a technology to successfully cure printed metal inks on temperature sensitive plastic substrates. In contrast to the traditional approach of thermal oven sintering, conductivities up to 30 % of the value of bulk silver can be achieved within a few seconds without foil deformation. The compatibility of this technology with R2R production has been demonstrated with line speeds up to 5 m/min. As a consequence, our approach is expected to enable the high throughput fabrication of current collecting grids for organic solar cells in order to replace transparent electrodes based on metal oxides such as ITO. Additionally, our new sintering technology has enabled us to process a new generation of conductive inks, based on copper complexes, which cannot be processed by oven sintering.

Large-scale roll-to-roll photonic sintering of flexo printed silver nanoparticle electrodes

“…Photonic sintering of silver and copper nanoparticle inks allows for roomtemperature processing and was demonstrated by several groups. [16][17][18][19][20][21][22] It should be noted that reported demonstrations have mostly been small test patterns and no large area structures close to real-world applications have been reported. The advantage of an intensive short-pulsed flashlight is the rapid heating of the metallic nanoparticle layer without damaging the substrate.…”