Organic photovoltaic module development with inverted device structure

Abstract

The power conversion efficiency (PCE) of organic photovoltaic (OPV) modules with 9.5% (25 cm2) and 8.7% (802 cm2) have been demonstrated. This PCE of the module exceeded our previous world records of 8.5% (25 cm2) and 6.8% (396 cm2) that were listed in the latest Solar Cell Efficiency Tables ver.43 [1]. Both module design and coating/patterning technique were consistently studied for module development. In order to achieve highly efficient modules, we increased the ratio of photo-active area to designated illumination area to 94% without any scribing process and placed insulating layers in order to decrease the leakage current. The meniscus coating method was used for the fabrication of both buffer and photoactive layers. This technique ensures the fabrication of uniform and nanometer order thickness layers with thickness variation less than 3%. Furthermore, the PCE of the OPV under indoor illumination was found to be higher than that of the conventional Si type solar cells. This indicates that OPVs are promising as electrical power supplies for indoor applications. Therefore, we have also developed several prototypes for electronics integrated photovoltaics (EIPV) such as electrical shelf labels and wireless sensors embedded with our OPV modules, which can be operated by indoor lights.

Solar cell efficiency tables (version 48)

“…A fourth new result in Table is the improvement of the efficiency of a 1 cm 2 organic solar cell to 11.2% for a cell fabricated by Toshiba and measured by AIST . Again, this is an initial efficiency with stability not investigated.…”

Slot‐Die and Roll‐to‐Roll Processed Single Junction Organic Photovoltaic Cells with the Highest Efficiency

“…2019, 9,1901805 As discussed earlier, we aimed to develop a process that could be scaled up. [75] The batch process was then translated to a roll-to-roll system to demonstrate the potential of high-performance rollto-roll printed flexible PSCs. Since the 3DP platform provides fully automated x-y-z position control, we simply programmed the coating length to be extended, and the coating to be repeated with a regular cell interval, while keeping other deposition parameters consistent with those of small cells.…”

A Review of Organic Photovoltaic Energy Source and Its Technological Designs

“…This advancement has fueled further interest in OPV systems and has also pushed several established companies to turn their focuses on OSC systems and other organic electronic devices and components such as OLEDs [1,20]. As mentioned earlier, due partly to the high interfacial contact area between the blended donor and acceptor molecules, which enhance the ionization of the strongly bound excitons, OSCs with BHJ structures have been shown to exhibit relatively good PCEs [27].…”

“…Recently, the OPV technology has shown tremendous development [14], evolving from its primitive stage to a relatively reliable source of clean energy in terms of power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) [14]. As shown in Figure 2, literature [23][24][25] has continually shown increases in organic PV solar cell PCEs, with laboratory solar cell efficiency reaching 10% in 2012 [10] and recently increased to~11.2% [26] in OSCs with inverted device structures [27] and~12% in well-optimized OPV systems with nonfullerene acceptor materials [14,28], while more efforts are being explored to improve semiconducting polymeric materials [29][30][31][32][33][34], OPV devices [35], and inorganic-organic hybrid structures [36]. This has led to OSCs and other organic device systems that are integrated with portable devices already being tested [37,38].…”