Blade-coated sol-gel indium-gallium-zinc-oxide for inverted polymer solar cell

Abstract

The inverted organic solar cell was fabricated by using sol-gel indium-gallium-zinc-oxide (IGZO) as the electron-transport layer. The IGZO precursor solution was deposited by blade coating with simultaneous substrate heating at 120 °C from the bottom and hot wind from above. Uniform IGZO film of around 30 nm was formed after annealing at 400 °C. Using the blend of low band-gap polymer poly[(4,8-bis-(2-ethylhexyloxy)-benzo(1,2-b:4,5-b’)dithiophene)-2,6-diyl-alt- (4-(2-ethylhexanoyl)-thieno [3,4-b]thiophene-)-2-6-diyl)] (PBDTTT-C-T) and [6,6]-Phenyl C71 butyric acid methyl ester ([70]PCBM) as the active layer for the inverted organic solar cell, an efficiency of 6.2% was achieved with a blade speed of 180 mm/s for the IGZO. The efficiency of the inverted organic solar cells was found to depend on the coating speed of the IGZO films, which was attributed to the change in the concentration of surface OH groups. Compared to organic solar cells of conventional structure using PBDTTT-C-T: [70]PCBM as active layer, the inverted organic solar cells showed significant improvement in thermal stability. In addition, the chemical composition, as well as the work function of the IGZO film at the surface and inside can be tuned by the blade speed, which may find applications in other areas like thin-film transistors.

Expeditious, scalable solution growth of metal oxide films by combustion blade coating for flexible electronics

“…Blade coating (BC) was next applied to MO film growth using the present processing methodology as CBC. CBC has advantages over spin-coating, including concurrent preannealing during film deposition, minimal precursor solution wastage (reduced by ∼10×), and scalability (48). Critical deposition parameters including coating speed (5-20 mm s −1 ), gap height (100/300 μm), and substrate temperature (room temperature/70°C) were optimized to balance metal ion-AcAcˉ/ FAcAcˉcoordination, solvent evaporation, solution flow thermodynamics, and desired final film thickness (SI Appendix, Fig.…”

A Printed Wireless Triangle‐Wave Generator via a Smartphone

“…Crystallographic analysis using XRD was also conducted to identify the sintered IGZO powders and confirmed the typical characteristic peaks of IGZO (Figure S5, Supporting Information). [ 29,30 ] An IGZO‐based semiconducting ink was formulated with PVA as a binder and was printed on PEDOT−silver electrodes by R2P gravure (Figure S6a, Supporting Information). The formulated IGZO ink with PVA was also tested for printability.…”

Highly efficient and stable organic solar cell modules processed by blade coating with 5.6% module efficiency and active area of 216 cm2

“…Because the thickness of the metal is not as critical as LiF, the overall mass production cost for this technology is expected to be low if the active material cost can be reduced in high volume. Although the devices mentioned in this article are all conventional OSC architecture, the blade coating process can also successfully be applied under the inverted device architecture …”