Challenges and opportunities in upscaling inkjet-printing of OPV

Abstract

The power conversion efficiency (PCE) and long-term stability of organic solar cells (OSCs) have increased tremendously over the past years, reaching up to 19.2% on research cells and 14.5% on large modules. To take the final step towards industrialization, fabrication methods that can be upscaled and directly implemented in industrial processes need to be developed.
In recent years, well-known industrial techniques, like drop-on-demand (DOD) inkjet printing, have been further developed within the OPV community, as it enables versatile printing of arbitrary, free-form organic solar modules with different colors—a key feature for modern building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) and several niche applications of OPV printed on any kind object. In this review, aside a brief summary of recent developments, we provide an overview of the biggest challenges in OPV inkjet-printing and define design rules to overcome these issues. Further perspectives of OPV inkjet-printing conclude the review.