Development of Lab‐to‐Fab Production Equipment Across Several Length Scales for Printed Energy Technologies, Including Solar Cells

Abstract

We describe and review how the scaling of printed energy technologies not only requires scaling of the input materials but also the machinery used in the processes. The general consensus that ultrafast processing of technologies with large energy capacity can only be realized using roll‐to‐roll methods is taken as a premise, and thus the progression from a highly successful laboratory technique (i.e., spin coating) to large‐scale roll‐to‐roll equipment is described in terms of all of the intermediate steps that must be available to make the transfer possible. Spin coating is compatible with materials availability on the small scale and efficient scaling of equipment is a demanding task that must be performed in parallel with increasing materials availability. We outline that 3–5 processing platforms are necessary to efficiently take the laboratory technology to a version that represents the lower end of the industrial scale. The machinery bridges the gap through firstly achieving improved ink efficiency without surface contact, followed by better ink efficiency at higher speeds, and finally large‐area processing at high speed with very high ink efficiency.

Reduced bimolecular recombination in blade-coated, high-efficiency, small-molecule solar cells

“…This can lead to difficulties when scaling systems demonstrated by spin-coating to high volume manufacturing. [10]…”

Humidity‐Tolerant Roll‐to‐Roll Fabrication of Perovskite Solar Cells via Polymer‐Additive‐Assisted Hot Slot Die Deposition

“…PeSCs can be potentially manufactured with this process as long as the deposition method is compatible with the roll‐to‐roll process. Slot die coating is regarded as the most suitable process for roll‐to‐roll manufacturing of solution‐processed solar cells and has been used for the large‐scale production of organic solar cells, which are similar to PeSCs in terms of the fabrication process . Therefore, slot die coating has also been studied for the fabrication of PeSCs, and roll‐to‐roll produced cells have been reported .…”

Optimization of spray coating for the fabrication of sequentially deposited planar perovskite solar cells

“…5,10,[11][12][13][14] Spray coating has been widely used for the fabrication of other emerging SCs, e.g., Refs. 15-20, but has not been adequately explored in the PVSC field, and only a few studies have employed it to fabricate the perovskite layer.…”