For organic solar cells, insertion of an optical spacer between the active layer and the reflective electrode results in a redistribution of the optical electric field. In this paper, theoretical calculations using optical modeling are compared with experimental results for devices with ZnO as optical spacer. An excellent agreement was found for blends composed of poly(3-hexylthiophene) and a fullerene derivative [6,6]-phenyl C61 butyric acid methyl ester.

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An upscalable, self‐aligned patterning technique for manufacturing high‐ performance, flexible organic thin‐film transistors is presented. The structures are self‐aligned using a single‐step, multi‐level hot embossing process. In combination with defect‐free anodized aluminum oxide as a gate dielectric, transistors on foil with channel lengths down to 5 μm are realized with high reproducibility. Resulting on‐off ratios of 4 × 106 and mobilities as high as 0.5 cm2 V−1 s−1 are achieved, indicating a stable process with potential to large‐area production with even much smaller structures.

An overview of different transparent conductors is given. In addition, atmospheric pressure CVD of ZnO resulted in conductivities below 1 mΩ cm for a temperature of 480°C, whereas at a process temperature of 200°C a value of 2 mΩ cm was obtained. Also atmospheric pressure spatial ALD was used to make conductive ZnO. Furthermore, the properties of transparent conductive oxides (TCO) can be enhanced by application of metallic grids. This way, sheet resistances of below 0.1 Ω/sq and transmittances above 85 % can be achieved. Modeling indicates that the performance of thin film cells can be enhanced by18% using a grid/TCO combination. Light scattering is a vital element of thin film solar cells and both texturization and multimaterial approaches for advanced light management such as plasmonics are discussed.

Organic flexible electronics is an emerging technology with huge potential growth in the future which is likely to open up a complete new series of potential applications such as flexible OLED-based displays, urban commercial signage, and flexible electronic paper. The transistor is the fundamental building block of all these applications. A key challenge in patterning transistors on flexible plastic substrates stems from the in-plane nonlinear deformations as a consequence of foil expansion/shrinkage, moisture uptake, baking etc. during various processing steps.Optical maskless lithography is one of the potential candidates for compensating for these foil distortions by in-situ adjustment prior to exposure of the new layer image with respect to the already patterned layers. Maskless lithography also brings the added value of reducing the cost-of-ownership related to traditional mask-based tools by eliminating the need for expensive masks. For the purpose of this paper, single-layer maskless exposures at 355 nm were performed on gold-coated poly(ethylenenaphthalate) (PEN) flexible substrates temporarily attached to rigid carriers to ensure dimensional stability during processing. Two positive photoresists were employed for this study and the results on plastic foils were benchmarked against maskless as well as mask-based (ASML PAS 5500/100D stepper) exposures on silicon wafers.