ITO with embedded silver grids as transparent conductive electrodes for large area organic solar cells

Abstract

In this work, development of semi-transparent electrodes for efficient large area organic solar cells (OSCs) has been demonstrated. Electron beam evaporated silver grids were embedded in commercially available ITO coatings on glass, through a standard negative photolithography process, in order to improve the conductivity of planar ITO substrates. The fabricated electrodes with embedded line and square patterned Ag grids reduced the sheet resistance of ITO by 25% and 40%, respectively, showing optical transmittance drops of less than 6% within the complete visible light spectrum for both patterns. Solution processed bulk heterojunction OSCs based on PTB7:[70]PCBM were fabricated on top of these electrodes with cell areas of 4.38 cm, and the performance of these OSCs was compared to reference cells fabricated on pure ITO electrodes. The Fill Factor (FF) of the large-scale OSCs fabricated on ITO with embedded Ag grids was enhanced by 18% for the line grids pattern and 30% for the square grids pattern compared to that of the reference OSCs. The increase in the FF was directly correlated to the decrease in the series resistance of the OSCs. The maximum power conversion efficiency (PCE) of the OSCs was measured to be 4.34%, which is 23% higher than the PCE of the reference OSCs. As the presented method does not involve high temperature processing, it could be considered a general approach for development of large area organic electronics on solvent resistant, flexible substrates.

Inverted organic solar cells with non-clustering bathocuproine (BCP) cathode interlayers obtained by fullerene doping

“…7. As a general observation, a reduced of J SC , FF (Table 2) and hence PCE were observed when increasing the active area from 2mm 2 to 100mm 2 , which in part can be understood from the increased ITO resistance for up-scaled areas 14,33,51 . Devices with 3 nm BCP:C 70 (2:1) show V OC and J SC of 0.85 V and 4.9 mA/cm 2 , respectively, but low FF values of 44% (Table 2).…”

Templateless, Plating‐Free Fabrication of Flexible Transparent Electrodes with Embedded Silver Mesh by Electric‐Field‐Driven Microscale 3D Printing and Hybrid Hot Embossing

“…g) A plot of T at 550 nm as a function of R s for our FTE with embedded silver mesh and the proposed FTEs with embedded conductive materials. [ 28,33–37,41,44,50–53,56,62–87 ]…”

Recent advances in fiber-shaped and planar-shaped textile solar cells

“…Solar energy is a promising alternative to fossil fuels, since it is renewable, clean, ecofriendly, sustainable, abundant, and readily available. Hence, many research efforts have been invested on improving the performance, efficiency and stability of different types of emerging photovoltaics (PVs) such as dye sensitized, [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] organic, [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22] and perovskite PVs. [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42] While conventional silicon solar cells are heavy, fragile, and rigid, flexible solar cells represent a good alternative to the silicon counterparts, because of not only their flexibility, but also their lightweight, which enable their integration in portable electronic applications.…”