Flexible Organic Solar Cells: Progress and Challenges

Abstract

Compared with inorganic photovoltaic technologies, flexibility is the most prominent feature of organic solar cells (OSCs). Flexible OSCs have been considered as one of the most promising directions in the OSC field, and have drawn tremendous attention in recent years. However, the power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) of flexible OSCs still lag behind those of their rigid counterparts. To further improve the performance of flexible OSCs, it is of great necessity for synergistic efforts to optimize flexible transparent electrodes (FTEs), photoactive materials, electrode buffer layers, and device structure engineering. Herein, the recent progress in flexible OSCs from the perspective of FTEs, including indium tin oxides, carbon nanomaterials, conducting polymers, silver nanowires, and ultrathin metal films and metal meshes, is summarized. In addition, the photoactive materials and electrode buffer layers in flexible OSCs are discussed to reveal the effects of material engineering and interface modification. Finally, a discussion of the future outlook and challenges of flexible OSCs is presented.

Biodegradable, Breathable Leaf Vein‐Based Tactile Sensors with Tunable Sensitivity and Sensing Range

“…[62][63][64] What's more, as the conductive fillers, Ag NWs also have a certain antibacterial function. [65,66] Moreover, nature leaf veins with microstructure are adopted to design the sensor, with surface morphology and SEM image illustrated in Figure 3b. It can be seen that the leaf veins have a large number of fracture structure ranging from nanoscale to macroscopic scale (Figure S10, Supporting Information), which has the advantage of optimizing its surface coverage while maintaining air permeability.…”

Influence of altering chlorine substitution positions on the photovoltaic properties of small molecule donors in all-small-molecule organic solar cells

“…To deal with the rapidly growing demand for renewable energy sources, organic solar cells (OSCs) have attracted tremendous attention around the world, and have been recognized as one of the most promising candidate photovoltaic technologies, due to their specific advantages in fabricating flexible devices with low cost and light weight through simple solution processing methods. 1–5 Benefitting mainly from the innovation of organic semiconductors (OSs) and the optimization of device engineering, the past several decades have witnessed amazing progress in the OSC field, highlighting the great potential of commercial application in the foreseeable future. 6–12 To be specific, the development of novel p-type OSs (donor materials) and n-type OSs (acceptor materials) has led to sufficient light absorption with minimum energy loss.…”

Mechanical strain, thermal and pressure effects on the absorption edge of an organic charge-transfer polymer for flexible photovoltaics and sensors

“…At present, organic/polymer solar cells are being widely investigated in a few main directions: (i) the application of new polymers, copolymers or small compounds in the active layer of PV devices, [2][3][4][5][6][7] (ii) the application of graphene, graphene oxide, their chemical modifications, carbon nanotubes, fullerenes and nonfullerenes, and their derivatives either as an active layer or as an interlayer in PV devices, [8][9][10][11][12][13][14] (iii) the application of new polymers or graphene as flexible substrates in PV devices [15][16][17] and (iv) the application of new polymers as hole transporting layers (HTLs), instead of poly (3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS), in PV devices. 18,19 To construct the active layer in polymer photovoltaic devices, poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) and poly[N-9 00 -heptadecanyl-2,7-carbazole-alt-5,5-(4 0 ,7 0 -di-2-thienyl-2 0 ,1 0 ,3 0 -benzothiadiazole)] (PCDTBT) have been widely investigated as donor materials.…”