Hot slot die coating for additive-free fabrication of high performance roll-to-roll processed polymer solar cells

Hot solution deposition has emerged as a promising strategy to achieve high performance polymer solar cells and many state-of-the-art devices have been recently fabricated by this approach in research laboratories. Currently, a major challenge in the photovoltaics community is translating such metho...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Energy & environmental science 2018-11, Vol.11 (11), p.3248-3255
Main Authors: Song, Seyeong, Lee, Kang Taek, Koh, Chang Woo, Shin, Hyebeom, Gao, Mei, Woo, Han Young, Vak, Doojin, Kim, Jin Young
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Additives
Coatings
Communities
Conversion coating
Deposition
Efficiency
Energy conversion efficiency
Fabrication
Laboratories
Morphology
Optimization
Photovoltaic cells
Photovoltaics
Polymers
Slot dies
Solar cells
Solar power
State of the art
Substrates
Temperature
Three dimensional printing
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Summary:Hot solution deposition has emerged as a promising strategy to achieve high performance polymer solar cells and many state-of-the-art devices have been recently fabricated by this approach in research laboratories. Currently, a major challenge in the photovoltaics community is translating such methodologies into industrially relevant processes so that progress can be made beyond the research community. In this work, hot deposition is developed via a slot die coating process, using a thermally robust and thickness tolerant photovoltaic polymer and a 3D printer-based slot die coater. This method uses not only hot substrates but also hot solutions. We find that controlling solution and substrate temperatures is critical to achieve optimum morphology and high device performance. Analysis of nano-morphology and molecular packing shows a clear influence of both solution and substrate temperatures. At optimal temperature conditions (80 °C head−80 °C substrate), slot die coated devices with an inverted configuration exhibited up to a 7.61% power conversion efficiency without using additives or other processing treatments, which are detrimental to stability and processing efficiency. The optimum temperature combination was readily scaled up using roll-to-roll processing equipment without further optimization, yielding flexible polymer solar cells with a 7.06% power conversion efficiency, demonstrating the potential of the hot slot die coating method from an industrial perspective.
ISSN:1754-5692
1754-5706
DOI:10.1039/C8EE02221F