Scaling organic photovoltaics to pilot line fabrication

摘要

Organic photovoltaics (OPVs) are an emerging technology for providing renewable energy. However, significant research in the field focuses on the development of small scale OPVs using methods that are not amenable to scale up. In order to scale the fabrication of OPVs from lab to commercial scale, several obstacles must be overcome. One notable example is that scalable coating of OPVs requires low processing temperatures in order to prevent deformation of the plastic films used in roll-to-roll coating. Traditional zinc acetate electron transport layers (ETLs) require high temperature anneals that are not compatible with flexible plastic substrates. This manuscript highlights the evaluation of zinc oxide nanoparticle based ETL formulations that enable low temperature anneals without impacting performance, resulting in the fabrication of pilot scale OPV modules reaching 6.3% power conversion efficiency.