High efficiency organic solar cells with spray coated active layers comprised of a low band gap conjugated polymer

Nie, Wanyi; Coffin, Robert C.; Liu, Jiwen; Li, Yuan; Peterson, Eric D.; MacNeill, Christopher M.; Noftle, Ronald E.; Carroll, David

doi:10.1063/1.3687911

Cited by 27 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…For a flexible PSC to be chemically stable, a flexible substrate must form a barrier to penetration of oxygen and moisture. Currently, most flexible PSCs are fabricated on transparent plastic film substrate such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polycarbonate, polyimide films . However, these substrates have the disadvantage of a high water vapor transmission rate (0.1 ≤ WVTR ≤ 10 g m −2 d −1 at 25 °C), which limits the lifetime of PSCs .…”

Section: Photovoltaic Parameters Of Spin‐coated and Bar‐coated Top‐ilmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This method is not compatible with large‐scale processes, because it has limited substrate size, is not easily adapted to continuous processes, and produces a large amount of chemical waste. To demonstrate high throughput and large‐area production of the TI‐PSCs, they must be printed on a metallic substrate . However, printing techniques such as screen printing, brush painting, and conventional bar‐coating require direct contact with the metallic substrate, and can easily damage it by scratching during printing.…”

Section: Photovoltaic Parameters Of Spin‐coated and Bar‐coated Top‐ilmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We compared PCE per unit active area of our device and of previously reported printed PSCs (Figure b) . Most previous papers used an active material of poly(3‐hexylthiophene) (P3HT) and ([6,6]‐phenyl‐ C60‐butyric acid methyl ester) (PCBM), and a bottom‐illumination structure, and therefore most had PCE < 4%; the best PCE value was 5.8% . The PCE in this work achieved PCE = 5.9% for TI‐PSCs.…”

Section: Photovoltaic Parameters Of Spin‐coated and Bar‐coated Top‐ilmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Simple Bar‐Coating Process for Fabrication of Flexible Top‐Illuminated Polymer Solar Cells on Metallic Substrate

Dong

Ham

Kim

et al. 2016

Adv Materials Technologies

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printing. Moreover, TI-PSCs have shown poor photoconversion effi ciency (PCE) because of diffi culties in forming an active layer on a hydrophobic bottom refl ective electrode. [ 61 ] To realize TI-PSCs on metallic substrate, the printing method must: (1) use a simple noncontact printing technique to avoid scratching the bottom refl ective electrode, (2) be optimized to yield a uniform and reproducible active layer, and (3) be easily used in R2R processes to allow mass production. (4) Also, TI-PSCs on metallic substrate must have PCE comparable to those of TI-PSC on glass or plastic substrates. Therefore, to achieve highly effi cient R2R-processed TI-PSCs on metallic substrate, a printing process must be developed and a device structure must be designed.Hereby, we fabricated TI-PSCs on metallic substrate by using a simple bar-coating method to deposit an active layer of lowbandgap donor and fullerene acceptor (PTB7:PCBM) ( Figure 1 ). Because bar-coating, used in this work, is a noncontact printing technique, the thickness of the PTB7:PCBM layer was tuned without scratching the refl ective bottom electrode, leading to apply for large-area R2R fabrication of fl exible PSCs. To achieve a fl exible metallic substrate, we developed a simple way to prepare the Cu foil by vacuum-depositing Cu to 50 nm thickness on a glass substrate, then electroplating. The result was 100 µm thick Cu foils that could be peeled from the glass substrate, and that had chemically clean and atomically fl at surface and are lightweight, fl exible, strong, thermally stable, and have low WVTR. These advantages were exploited to demonstrate TI-PSCs. After optimizing the bar-coating process and designing the device structure, TI-PSCs were successfully fabricated on fl exible Cu foil; they had an average PCE of 5.7%, which is comparable to the PCE = 5.9% of TI-PSCs on rigid glass substrate and is the highest yet obtained by printed fl exible PSCs.Spin-coating and bar-coating were used to deposit largearea PTB7:PCBM layers. For spin-coating, 200 µL of precursor solution was dropped on the center of a glass substrate (area = 16 cm 2 ), which was then spun at 1800 rpm ( Figure 2 a). The PTB7:PCBM layer was uniform at the center, but not at the edge of the substrate because centrifugal force during spinning prevented the solution from wetting the surface. To obtain uniform layer, 600 µL of solution is required for spin-coating method ( Figure S1, Supporting Information). In contrast, barcoating 50 µL of precursor solution resulted in a conformal layer of PTB7:PCBM on a large substrate (area = 64 cm 2 ) (Figure 2 b). These results indicate that bar-coating allows the PTB7:PCBM layer to be more uniformly deposited on a larger substrate than the spin-coating method.Optical transmittance, OT (i.e., in visible spectrum 400 ≤ λ ≤ 800 nm) of bar-coated PTB7:PCBM layers decreased Flexible polymer solar cells (PSCs) are light weight, inexpensive, and compatible with large-area roll-to-roll (R2R) fabrication. [1][2][3][4][5] For a fl exible PSC to be chemicall...

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Section: Photovoltaic Parameters Of Spin‐coated and Bar‐coated Top‐ilmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Photovoltaic Parameters Of Spin‐coated and Bar‐coated Top‐ilmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Photovoltaic Parameters Of Spin‐coated and Bar‐coated Top‐ilmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Simple Bar‐Coating Process for Fabrication of Flexible Top‐Illuminated Polymer Solar Cells on Metallic Substrate

Dong

Ham

Kim

et al. 2016

Adv Materials Technologies

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“…First, we discuss the key function of the active materials forming the donor–acceptor semiconductor heterojunction. Spray coating is very appealing for the deposition of the donor–acceptor blend, because it allows fine control of the morphology of the active layer using solvent interplay through co‐solvent formulations,19 the type of nozzle and source of the solution, the temperature of the substrate,20 and the post‐annealing conditions 21. Special attention is given to the high‐performing low‐band‐gap polymers,20 possibly deposited using non‐chlorinated solvents 7.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spray Coating for Polymer Solar Cells: An Up‐to‐Date Overview

et al. 2015

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Solution processing is the most appealing aspect of organic photovoltaic (OPV) devices. The possibility of printing low‐cost, lightweight, and efficient polymer solar cells (PSC) is the commonly accepted paradigm associated with printable materials deposited as inks using solution‐processing techniques. In addition to slot–die, serigraphy, and flexo/gravure printing, spray coating can be used for photo‐active polymer blends, interface materials for hole and electron extraction, and electrodes. This technique is widely accepted in the industrial world as one of the most suitable for coating thin layers onto virtually any kind of substrate (e.g., glass, metal, plastic) with a degree of conformability insuperable by any other high‐speed coating technique. We present the basic principles governing the mechanisms of atomization, the main techniques adopted for PSCs, the state of the art applications of spray coating for building up each layer of a PSC, and an overview of the perspectives for industrialization.

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“…Since the first demonstration of spray coated OSCs, spray coating has been widely used to fabricate high performance OSCs. [7][8][9][10][11][12] This scalable and versatile coating method has also been used to fabricate large size OSCs 13 as well as fully spray coated OSCs. 14,15 Most recently, spray coating was used to fabricate organic-inorganic perovskite solar cells with up to 11% PCE.…”

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confidence: 99%

Optically monitored spray coating system for the controlled deposition of the photoactive layer in organic solar cells

Vak

Embden

Wong

et al. 2015

Applied Physics Letters

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A spray deposition process equipped with an in situ optical thickness monitoring system has been developed to fabricate the photoactive layer of solar cells. Film thickness is monitored by a photodiode–LED couple after each deposition cycle. Using optimized conditions, the thickness of the spray deposited photoactive films can be tuned to increase linearly with the number of deposition cycles over a wide range of deposition conditions. After instrument calibration, optimization of the active layer thickness can be accomplished by simply setting the desired absorbance of the film. The simple process outlined here may be used for the rapid optimization of thin film photovoltaic devices. As proof of this, we fabricate a poly(3-hexylthiophene-2,5-diyl) (P3HT) and phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester as well as a P3HT and indene-C60 bis-adduct organic solar cells, which achieve a champion power conversion efficiency of 4.2%.

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High efficiency organic solar cells with spray coated active layers comprised of a low band gap conjugated polymer

Cited by 27 publications

References 17 publications

Simple Bar‐Coating Process for Fabrication of Flexible Top‐Illuminated Polymer Solar Cells on Metallic Substrate

Simple Bar‐Coating Process for Fabrication of Flexible Top‐Illuminated Polymer Solar Cells on Metallic Substrate

Spray Coating for Polymer Solar Cells: An Up‐to‐Date Overview

Optically monitored spray coating system for the controlled deposition of the photoactive layer in organic solar cells

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