High Performance Organic Solar Cells Fabricated Using Recycled Transparent Conductive Substrates

Abstract

The power conversion efficiency (PCE) of organic solar cells (OSCs) has been gradually increasing over the past years, but these emerging photovoltaic devices still suffer from relatively short lifetimes. To promote circular economy and reduce costly electronic materials wastes, we explore the possibility of recycling durable zinc oxide coated indium tin oxide (ITO/ZnO) from nonfullerene OSCs through sequential ultrasonication in a series of solvents followed by thermal annealing. With the adequate cleaning sequence, the recycled ITO/ZnO substrates produce PCEs of 8.65%, a value comparable to the PCEs obtained with freshly prepared substrates (8.73%). Our results also indicate that isopropanol gradually removes the zinc oxide layer and should thus be avoided when attempting multiple successive recycling of the same substrate. ITO/ZnO substrates recycled 10 times with and without isopropanol yield PCEs of 5.14% and 7.93%, respectively. By optimizing the recycling procedure, we introduce a simple strategy to considerably increase the lifecycle of transparent electrode substrates employed in organic electronic devices and decrease the amount of wastes from the electronic industry.

18.4 % Organic Solar Cells Using a High Ionization Energy Self‐Assembled Monolayer as Hole‐Extraction Interlayer

“…[52] Besides improving the PCE, the operational stability and recyclability of emerging photovoltaic technologies are becoming important to reduce the manufacturing cost and environmental impact. [59][60][61] The improved operational stability of SAM-based OPVs compared with PEDOT : PSS-based cells were demonstrated in previous study. [3] Moreover, preserving the integrity of the substrate/ITO system, for example, could allow its reuse, thus contributing towards that scope.…”

Application of biopolymer materials and polymer-based photoelectric materials

“…), this will completely change the manufacture of electronic devices, and some applications requiring special mechanical properties (such as flexible devices) can also be realized. Because of these special advantages, both domestic and foreign academic and industrial circles are increasing their investment in this field, which makes organic electronics develop rapidly [10].…”

Green-light wavelength-selective organic solar cells for agrivoltaics: dependence of wavelength on photosynthetic rate

“…1,2 Organic solar cells (OSCs) offer distinct advantages over silicon solar cells, including light weight, exibility, designability, and disposability. [3][4][5][6][7][8][9] The typical active layer of an OSC consists of a nanometer-scale bulk heterojunction (BHJ) structure composed of donors (p-type organic semiconductors) and acceptors (n-type organic semiconductors). [10][11][12][13] The advantage of organic semiconductors is that the energy levels of the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) and the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO), and energy gap (E g ), can be ne-tuned through appropriate molecular design.…”