High‐Performance Upscaled Indium Tin Oxide–Free Organic Solar Cells with Visual Esthetics and Flexibility

Abstract

Organic solar cells (OSCs) show great promise for future applications due to their merits of low cost, flexibility, and vivid colors, etc. However, the "conventional" device architecture with a brittle and expensive glass/indium tin oxide (ITO) transparent electrode weakens these potential advantages and restricts it to small areas for high performance. Herein, a device architecture simultaneously combining the advantages of high performance, superior flexibility, diverse colors, and low-cost upscaling production is developed. The device structure features a top-illumination geometry with a thermally evaporated ultrathin Ag film as transparent electrode for ITO replacement. The formation of optical microcavity and high conductance of ultrathin Ag enables high performance for upscaled OSCs. Moreover, this device architecture further enables diverse colors via tuning the TeO 2 layer atop of the ultrathin Ag transparent electrode. This topillumination structure is more tolerant for substrates and enables wider flexible substrates. As a result, the flexible OSCs with upscaled areas of 1.05 cm 2 exhibit a best performance of 13.09% (certified 11.9%) with superior flexibility, diverse colors, representing one of the best ITO-free upscaled flexible OSCs. This work provides a versatile device structure to highlight the merits of OSCs, and paves the way for the future commercialization and practical applications.

12.42% Monolithic 25.42 cm2 Flexible Organic Solar Cells Enabled by an Amorphous ITO‐Modified Metal Grid Electrode

“…Compared with the literature performance of large‐area monolithic OSCs (Figure 5e and Table S3, Supporting Information), these performances of the 4.00, 9.00, and 25.42 cm 2 devices are among the highest PCE for the large‐area single‐junction flexible OSCs. [ 12,14,30,31,35,36,61–73 ] The performance of 25.42 cm 2 device was certified, and PCE of 12.03% was recorded (the testing report is shown in the Supporting Information). The simulated performance parameters of devices with different areas were calculated by the equivalent circuit model.…”

“…e) PCE of flexible OSCs with different dimensions, all references are listed in the Supporting Information. [ 12,14,30,31,35,36,45,61–73 ]…”

“…Compared with the literature performance of large-area monolithic OSCs (Figure 5e and Table S3, Supporting Information), these performances of the 4.00, 9.00, and 25.42 cm 2 devices are among the highest PCE for the large-area single-junction OSCs with different dimensions, all references are listed in the Supporting Information. [12,14,30,31,35,36,45,[61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73] www.advmat.de www.advancedsciencenews.com Adv. Mater.…”

“…2022, 34,2110276 flexible OSCs. [12,14,30,31,35,36,[61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73] The performance of 25.42 cm 2 device was certified, and PCE of 12.03% was recorded (the testing report is shown in the Supporting Information). The simulated performance parameters of devices with different areas were calculated by the equivalent circuit model.…”

Improving the device performance of organic solar cells with immiscible solid additives

“…Organic solar cells (OSCs) are drawing more and more attention due to their attractive advantages like light weight, low processing cost, flexibility, semi-transparency, etc. 1–6 With the rapid progress in material design, morphology control, device architecture design, etc. , the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of OSCs has been significantly improved.…”