High‐Throughput Screening of Blade‐Coated Polymer:Polymer Solar Cells: Solvent Determines Achievable Performance

Abstract

Optimization of a new system for organic solar cells is a multiparametric analysis problem that requires substantial efforts in terms of time and resources. The strong microstructure-dependent performance of polymer:polymer cells makes them particularly difficult to optimize, or to translate previous knowledge from spin coating into more scalable techniques. In this work, the photovoltaic performance of blade-coated devices was studied based on the promising polymer:polymer system PBDB-T and PF5-Y5 as donor and acceptor, respectively. Using the recently developed highthroughput methodology, the system was optimized for multiple variables, including solvent system, active layer composi-tion, ratio, and thickness, among others, by fabricating more than 500 devices with less than 24 mg of each component. As a result, the power conversion efficiency of the blade-coated devices varied from 0.08 to 6.43 % in the best device. The performed statistical analysis of the large experimental data obtained showed that solvent selection had the major impact on the final device performance due to its influence on the active layer microstructure. As a conclusion, the use of the plot of the device efficiency in the Hansen space was proposed as a powerful tool to guide solvent selection in organic photovoltaics.

Maximizing Performance and Stability of Organic Solar Cells at Low Driving Force for Charge Separation

“…Harillo et al have presented a HT study of variation of process conditions by blade coating, an upscalable method, producing >500 devices and varying 24 process conditions with the goal of maximizing PCE. [96,97] The ratio of localized amorphous regions and ordered regions (A a, chain ) should scale with the length of the ordered polymer chains. e) Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) to predict A a,chain from the process conditions.…”

Cutting “lab-to-fab” short: high throughput optimization and process assessment in roll-to-roll slot die coating of printed photovoltaics

“…6,7 High throughput methods, combined with machine learning and statistical analysis, have been established to accelerate the screening of these materials. [8][9][10][11][12] Coating techniques such as spin coating 13 and doctor blading, [14][15][16] as well as printing techniques, such as ink jet printing, 17 have been employed in this context. Simultaneous variation of two different parameters on a single substrate has been achieved by applying perpendicular gradients of annealing temperature and film thickness 16,18 and by thickness gradients of both absorber layers for tandem cells.…”

High‐Throughput Exploration of Triple‐Cation Perovskites via All‐in‐One Compositionally‐Graded Films

“…The progress of many important technologies such as solar cells, light‐emitting diodes, batteries, superconductors, and thermoelectrics rely on how fast materials are discovered or developed. Because the best materials are often a blend of multiple components, high‐throughput experimentations (HTEs), [ 1–33 ] both for making and studying mixtures/alloys, have recently gained major attention. [ 2 ] However, state‐of‐art HTEs are unfortunately able to make only a fraction of possible compositions and then employ machine learning algorithms to extrapolate to unmade compositional space.…”