A General Approach for Lab‐to‐Manufacturing Translation on Flexible Organic Solar Cells

• Published in: Advanced materials (Weinheim) Vol. 31; no. 41; pp. e1903649 - n/a
• Main Authors: Meng, Xiangchuan, Zhang, Lin, Xie, Yuanpeng, Hu, Xiaotian, Xing, Zhi, Huang, Zengqi, Liu, Cong, Tan, Licheng, Zhou, Weihua, Sun, Yanming, Ma, Wei, Chen, Yiwang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Germany Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01.10.2019; Wiley Blackwell (John Wiley & Sons)
• Subjects: Coating; Efficiency; Evolution; Flexibility; Fullerenes; Heterojunctions; impulse calculation; Materials science; Modules; Morphology; Organic chemistry; organic solar cells; Photovoltaic cells; Printing; Shear; slot‐die printing; Solar cells; Weight reduction; organic solar cells; flexibility; impulse calculation; slot-die printing; modules
• ISSN: 0935-9648; 1521-4095; 1521-4095
• DOI: 10.1002/adma.201903649

The blossoming of organic solar cells (OSCs) has triggered enormous commercial applications, due to their high‐efficiency, light weight, and flexibility. However, the lab‐to‐manufacturing translation of the praisable performance from lab‐scale devices to industrial‐scale modules is still the Achilles' heel of OSCs. In fact, it is urgent to explore the mechanism of morphological evolution in the bulk heterojunction (BHJ) with different coating/printing methods. Here, a general approach to upscale flexible organic photovoltaics to module scale without obvious efficiency loss is demonstrated. The shear impulse during the coating/printing process is first applied to control the morphology evolution of the BHJ layer for both fullerene and nonfullerene acceptor systems. A quantitative transformation factor of shear impulse between slot‐die printing and spin‐coating is detected. Compelling results of morphological evolution, molecular stacking, and coarse‐grained molecular simulation verify the validity of the impulse translation. Accordingly, the efficiency of flexible devices via slot‐die printing achieves 9.10% for PTB7‐Th:PC71BM and 9.77% for PBDB‐T:ITIC based on 1.04 cm2 . Furthermore, 15 cm2 flexible modules with effective efficiency up to 7.58% (PTB7‐Th:PC71BM) and 8.90% (PBDB‐T:ITIC) are demonstrated with satisfying mechanical flexibility and operating stability. More importantly, this work outlines the shear impulse translation for organic printing electronics. A general approach for lab‐to‐manufacturing translation is developed to achieve high‐performance flexible organic solar modules without obvious efficiency loss. The shear impulse during the coating/printing process is applied to control the morphology evolution of the bulk heterojunction layer for both fullerene and nonfullerene acceptor systems. A quantitative transformation factor of shear impulse between slot‐die printing and spin‐coating is detected.