Large‐Area Organic Solar Cells: Material Requirements, Modular Designs, and Printing Methods

Abstract

The printing of large‐area organic solar cells (OSCs) has become a frontier for organic electronics and is also regarded as a critical step in their industrial applications. With the rapid progress in the field of OSCs, the highest power conversion efficiency (PCE) for small‐area devices is approaching 15%, whereas the PCE for large‐area devices has also surpassed 10% in a single cell with an area of ≈1 cm2. Here, the progress of this fast developing area is reviewed, mainly focusing on: 1) material requirements (materials that are able to form efficient thick active layer films for large‐area printing); 2) modular designs (effective designs that can suppress electrical, geometric, optical, and additional losses, leading to a reduction in the PCE of the devices, as a consequence of substrate area expansion); and 3) printing methods (various scalable fabrication techniques that are employed for large‐area fabrication, including knife coating, slot‐die coating, screen printing, inkjet printing, gravure printing, flexographic printing, pad printing, and brush coating). By combining thick‐film material systems with efficient modular designs exhibiting low‐efficiency losses and employing the right printing methods, the fabrication of large‐area OSCs will be successfully realized in the near future.

Triimide‐Functionalized n‐Type Polymer Semiconductors Enabling All‐Polymer Solar Cells with Power Conversion Efficiencies Approaching 9%

“…Harvesting solar energies using the techniques of organic solar cells (OSCs), especially polymer solar cells (PSCs), has generated substantial interests in both academia and industry. By blending an electron donor (p‐type) polymer with an electron acceptor (n‐type) material in solution, PSCs can be readily fabricated in a cost‐effective and high‐throughput fashion, including roll‐to‐roll printing and doctor‐blade coating . With the development of high‐performance donor polymers, power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) of PSCs have been steadily improved to >11%, where fullerene derivatives are used as the acceptor materials.…”

“…By blending an electron donor (p-type) polymer with an electron acceptor (n-type) material in solution, PSCs can be readily fabricated in a cost-effective and highthroughput fashion, including roll-to-roll printing and doctor-blade coating. [1][2][3][4][5] With the development of high-performance donor polymers, power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) of PSCs have been steadily improved to >11%, [6] where fullerene derivatives are used as the acceptor materials. However, the intrinsic drawbacks of fullerenes, such as high synthetic cost, weak solar absorption, poor tunability of frontier molecular orbital (FMO) energy levels, etc., limit the efficiencies and applications of fullerene-based polymer showed superior all-PSC performance with a PCE of 6.8%.…”

An Ultraviolet‐Deposited MoO3 Film as Anode Interlayer for High‐Performance Polymer Solar Cells

“…Polymer solar cells (PSCs) have emerged as a very attractive photovoltaic technology due to the great potential to realize flexible and large-area devices with low-cost solution processing methods. [1][2][3][4] Especially, PSCs based on nonfullerene acceptors with the advantages of molecular-design flexibility and potentially low cost have been intensively focused in the recent years www.advmatinterfaces.de into the precursor (ammonium heptamolybdate tetrahydrate) solution while high annealing temperature of 200 °C was necessary in the preparation process. [27,28] In this work, an ultraviolet-deposited MoO 3 film is developed as anode interlayer based on commercial molybdenum(V) chloride (MoCl 5 ) as precursor.…”

Ultra-narrow bandgap non-fullerene acceptors for organic solar cells with low energy loss

“…Bulk-heterojunction (BHJ) solar cells based on nonfullerene acceptors (NFAs) have attracted extensive interest in the past few years due to their potential and advantages in the fabrication of large-area, flexible and low-cost devices. [1][2][3][4][5] In the past two decades, fullerene derivatives have drawn the most attention and have achieved excellent photovoltaic performance on account of their high electron mobility and high electron affinity. [6][7][8][9][10][11][12] In spite of the great success, fullerene derivatives have some intrinsic drawbacks, such as weak light absorption, low structural flexibility, and synthetic complexity, which hinder the further improvement of organic solar cell (OSC) performance.…”