Fully gravure printed organic photovoltaic modules: A straightforward process with a high potential for large scale production

Abstract

In this work, we describe a novel approach for the fabrication of flexible organic photovoltaic (OPV) modules with an inverted architecture by a versatile and scalable gravure printing process. The printing has been carried out using a sheet-to-sheet (S2S) lab scale proofer, while all the printing steps were performed in ambient conditions and were optimized for each of the OPV layers. Commercially available zinc oxide (ZnO) ink was used as the electron transport (ETL) layer, poly(3-hexylthiophene):[6,6]-phenyl C61 butyric acid methyl ester (P3HT:PCBM) blend comprised the bulk heterojunction (BHJ) photoactive layer, poly-3,4-ethylenedioxy-thiophene:poly(styrenesulfonic-acid) (PEDOT:PSS) was used as the hole transport layer (HTL), and silver (Ag) nanoparticle ink was used as the top contact electrode. The four OPV layers have been successively printed on indium tin oxide (ITO) coated polyethylene terephthalate (PET) flexible substrate using the same printing parameters, allowing the high production throughput in a roll-to-roll (R2R) printing process. The printed OPV modules have size of 45cm2 with an active area of 8cm2 composed of 8 interconnected cells and exhibited a maximum power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 2.22%. The printing parameters were optimized by the contribution from extensive morphological characterization carried out by scanning and transmission electron microscopy (SEM, TEM), as well as from Spectroscopic Ellipsometry (SE) for the determination of the printed layers thickness, optical properties and photoactive layer blend morphology. The above approach revealed the required printing parameters for the further optimization of the layer interface, morphology, thickness and substrate properties in order to implement the above methodology for large-scale manufacturing of flexible OPVs by a R2R process.