Fabricating efficient flexible organic photovoltaics using an eco-friendly cellulose nanofibers/silver nanowires conductive substrate

Lin, Po‐Chen; Hsieh, Cheng‐Tien; Liu, Xin; Chang, Feng-Cheng; Chen, Wen‐Chang; Yu, Jiangsheng; Chueh, Chu‐Chen

doi:10.1016/j.cej.2020.126996

Cited by 33 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…These devices present power conversion efficiency (PCE) values up to 7.2%, compared to 8.5% obtained for analogous structures built on glass/ITO substrates. To our knowledge, the performances achieved are comparable to those obtained for the best-performing OSCs built on other bio-based substrates, such as silk fibroin/Ag-NWs (PCE: 6.6%), glossy paper/Ag (PCE: 6.4%), and pretreated cellulose nanofibers (CNFs) with embedded silver nanowires (Ag-NWs, PCE: 7.5%) . In addition, an environmentally safe disassembly method has been developed for the separation of all of the main components, obtaining selective and almost entire recovery of the noble metals (Ag and Au) employed.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 56%

Sodium Alginate as a Natural Substrate for Efficient and Sustainable Organic Solar Cells

Marchi

Dinelli

Maccagnani

et al. 2022

ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng.

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Organic electronics, in particular organic photovoltaics, have gained widespread attention due to their unique properties such as lightness, flexibility, and low cost. Thanks to some recent breakthroughs in organic solar cells (OSCs) that exhibit power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) approaching 20%, this technology is slowly making its way into the market as a complementary solution to conventional photovoltaic devices. OSCs are well suited for high-end smart applications, ranging from building integration and Internet of Things to consumer electronics. However, up to now, little attention has been devoted to the environmental impact and sustainability of components and processes. It is thus necessary to develop a new generation of eco-designed devices without losing the level of performance. In this work, we report the fabrication of efficient and stable solution-processed OSCs built on a free-standing sodium alginate (SA) substrate. SA is a natural biodegradable polymer derived from brown algae. It is low-cost, nontoxic, abundant, water-processable, and easy to manipulate for the realization of homogeneous and transparent foils. SA-based OSCs exhibit PCEs from 1.8 to 7.2% and can be disassembled through a safe and sustainable biocatalyzed process, allowing selective and almost entire recovery of precious metals, such as Au and Ag, as well as the separation of all of the main components. This allows us to minimize the production of e-waste, in accordance with the requirements of sustainability and the circular economy.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 56%

Sodium Alginate as a Natural Substrate for Efficient and Sustainable Organic Solar Cells

Marchi

Dinelli

Maccagnani

et al. 2022

ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng.

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“…Kim and co‐workers reported versatile selective adhesion control of AgNWs against various flexible substrates via local surface treatment by ultraviolet/ozone, oxygen plasma, or atmosphere plasma, which can be used to pattern NW‐based electrodes. [ 172 ] The application of biodegradable materials such as alginate gel [ 173 ] and cellulose nanofibers [ 174 ] has been studied in conjunction with AgNWs for adhesion enhancement, which presents an interesting line of research for sustainable photovoltaics. For metal meshes deposited by PVD, a layer of predeposited Ni was found to greatly improve the substrate adhesion of Au mesh electrode.…”

Section: Flexible Solar Cells Using Metal‐based Transparent Electrodesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Such a direction can contribute to sustainable photovoltaics production, which was investigated recently through a AgNW electrode embedded in cellulose nanofibers. [ 174 ] In recent years, numerous highly efficient flexible OSCs with PCE > 10% using AgNW transparent electrodes have emerged. Mechanically, most of the reported cells were able to retain 60–90% of the initial PCE after 1000 bending cycles at small bending radii from 2 to 3 mm.…”

Section: Flexible Solar Cells Using Metal‐based Transparent Electrodesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recent Progress on Emerging Transparent Metallic Electrodes for Flexible Organic and Perovskite Photovoltaics

2021

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The rapid development of smart and wearable electronics calls for revolutionizing optoelectronics to become flexible, lightweight, and affordable. To meet these demands in photovoltaic devices, that is, solar cells, it is essential to develop mechanically flexible transparent electrodes over the conventional rigid ones while features such as low‐temperature procedures, stability, solution process, and/or low cost are highly desired and often required. Moreover, the optoelectronic properties of an electrode must not be compromised in an operational flexible cell. Despite the considerable challenges, various bendable transparent electrodes for solar cells have emerged in recent years. Particularly, transparent electrodes based on metallic materials are especially attractive as metal offers excellent conductivity and their formation processing is generally mature and commercially viable. This work aims to provide an overview of the recent development of metal‐based transparent electrodes for flexible organic and perovskite photovoltaics. After the introduction, metallic materials for the transparent electrodes including nanowires, meshes/grids, and films are discussed. The procedures and protocols for cell flexibility testing are summarized, before highlighting recent progress on fully functional, high‐efficiency flexible organic and perovskite solar cells using these transparent metallic electrodes. Finally, the challenges and outlook of the research field are discussed.

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“…Hence, during the deposition process of the SiO 2 for MEMS-based devices, the surface roughness is precisely taken into account as it greatly affects the performance, reliability and isolation of the system [18]. Moreover, it heavily depends upon the deposition rate, temperature and thickness of the layers, as in the case of the solar cells, acting as the main component of photovoltaics [19][20][21][22]. The thin-film deposition techniques used for SiO 2 deposition include sputter deposition method, thermal evaporation, chemical vapor deposition (CVD), ion beam deposition (IBD) [23], physical vapor deposition (PVD) and PECVD.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prediction of Surface Roughness as a Function of Temperature for SiO2 Thin-Film in PECVD Process

et al. 2022

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An analytical model to predict the surface roughness for the plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) process over a large range of temperature values is still nonexistent. By using an existing prediction model, the surface roughness can directly be calculated instead of repeating the experimental processes, which can largely save time and resources. This research work focuses on the investigation and analytical modeling of surface roughness of SiO2 deposition using the PECVD process for almost the whole range of operating temperatures, i.e., 80 to 450 °C. The proposed model is based on experimental data of surface roughness against different temperature conditions in the PECVD process measured using atomic force microscopy (AFM). The quality of these SiO2 layers was studied against an isolation layer in a microelectromechanical system (MEMS) for light steering applications. The analytical model employs different mathematical approaches such as linear and cubic regressions over the measured values to develop a prediction model for the whole operating temperature range of the PECVD process. The proposed prediction model is validated by calculating the percent match of the analytical model with experimental data for different temperature ranges, counting the correlations and error bars.

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Fabricating efficient flexible organic photovoltaics using an eco-friendly cellulose nanofibers/silver nanowires conductive substrate

Cited by 33 publications

References 46 publications

Sodium Alginate as a Natural Substrate for Efficient and Sustainable Organic Solar Cells

Sodium Alginate as a Natural Substrate for Efficient and Sustainable Organic Solar Cells

Recent Progress on Emerging Transparent Metallic Electrodes for Flexible Organic and Perovskite Photovoltaics

Prediction of Surface Roughness as a Function of Temperature for SiO2 Thin-Film in PECVD Process

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