Material Strategies to Accelerate OPV Technology Toward a GW Technology

Abstract

the worldwide peak capacity of solar energy production has caught up with wind power, and is expected to be the first renewable energy to exceed the TWp limit in the next few years, probably already by 2023. [1] Solar Power Europe reports levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for photovoltaic power to range from 5 c (kWh) −1 in the North of Europe like in Helsinki and 3 c (kWh) −1 in the south of Europe, like in Malaga, which will further go down to 3 c (kWh) −1 respectively 1c (kWh) −1. [2] Fraunhofer ISE reports in the 2019 PV report that photovoltaic installations are dominated by crystalline silicon (c-Si) with a market share of over 95% in solar farms and on rooftops. [3] With the rise of the solar power century, photovoltaic applications and installations will go beyond the traditional green field power plants and enter every aspect of our daily life. Urban, naval and space mobility, residential buildings and business towers, all types of facades, portable and Internet of Things (IoT) applications, clothing-almost any aspect of our life can and will be powered by solar energy. While c-Si appears untouchable as leading PV main stream technology for a longer time, many of the new applications which rely on flexibility, transparency, color management, integrability or simply elegant appearance require novel photovoltaic materials and technologies.

Improving Photovoltaic Performance of Non‐Fullerene Polymer Solar Cells Enables by Fine‐Tuning Blend Microstructure via Binary Solvent Mixtures

“…However, in some cases, many morphology control strategies, like SVA and TA treatments, are not useful for the possible large‐scale fabrication in industry scenarios. [ 41,42 ] As expected, development of appropriate approaches to improve the printed film formation, BHJ morphology, and composition distribution for blend films is of great significance and urgent, especially under the background that the efficiency of the currently reported photovoltaic systems has basically met commercial requirements. [ 43,44 ]…”

“…Among the above‐mentioned strategies, binary solvent mixture (like chlorobenzene (CB)/1,8‐diiodooctance (DIO) and chloroform (CF)/1‐chloronaphthalene (CN) binary solvents), which has been successfully used in morphology control in fullerene and non‐fullerene based OSCs, [ 41,45–48 ] is one effective and very simple approach to fine‐tune the composition distribution of active layers. By mixing a few volume percent of DIO or CN with the host solvent (CB or CF), the device performance can be improved significantly.…”

Recent Progress and Challenges toward Highly Stable Nonfullerene Acceptor‐Based Organic Solar Cells

“…[ 292 ] and Brabec et al. [ 293 ] To ensure a smooth transition from laboratory devices to industry modules, capability in the large scale synthesis of low cost materials (including active materials, substrates, interlayers, electrodes) and rapid production of large area organic thin films with good tolerance to thickness variations is required. The cost of materials remains a major hurdle to overcome on the research and development of nonfullerene OSCs toward a truly low‐cost technology.…”

“…However, the chemical versatility of NFA provides great potential for multiobjective optimization and makes NFA possible to be a class of auxiliary materials to solve the internal performance, cost, and stability of a material. [ 293 ]…”

Photoactive Material for Highly Efficient and All Solution‐Processed Organic Photovoltaic Modules: Study on the Efficiency, Stability, and Synthetic Complexity

“…In this work, we present a novel photoactive BHJ system, named PV‐X Plus (PV‐X+). The prepared devices have a high PCE of 16.1% and a relatively lower synthetic complexity (SC) index [ 57–59 ] based on a proprietary, commercialized, conjugated polymer, and NF acceptor. According to the studies that discussed the OPV module architecture with an inverted structure, the efficiencies of most OPV devices are still mainly limited by the coating method and device architecture, not to mention the all‐solution coatings and ambient processes, including the deposition of the electron‐transporting layer (ETL), BHJ layer, and hole‐transporting layer (HTL).…”