Abstract
Spray coating technique has been established as a promising substitute for the traditional coating methods in the fabrication of organic devices in many reports recently. Control of film morphology at the microscopic scale is critical if spray-coated devices are to achieve high performance. Here we investigate electrospray deposition protocols for the fabrication of poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) thin films with a single additive system under ambient conditions at room temperature. Critical deposition parameters including solution composition, applied voltage, and relative humidity are discussed systematically. Optimized process for preparing homogenous PEDOT:PSS thin films is applied to all-electrospray-coated organic photovoltaic cells and contributes to a power conversion efficiency comparable to that of the corresponding all-spin-coated device.
Highlights
There has been intensive research on fabrication methods of thin films fabrication for cost-effective organic electronic devices in the past decade [1,2,3,4,5]
Control of the morphology of electrospray-coated PEDOT:PSS thin films in cone-jet mode is archived by adjusting flow rate and ink properties via applied voltage and the fraction of the additive DMSO
The root mean square (RMS) roughness of the PEDOT:PSS thin films is dominated by the flow rate of the PEDOT:PSS inks tested in this paper
Summary
There has been intensive research on fabrication methods of thin films fabrication for cost-effective organic electronic devices in the past decade [1,2,3,4,5]. Spin coating is the most widely used wet process of making devices in laboratories due to its simplicity and reproducibility This method cannot meet the requirement of high-throughput roll-to-roll process and have limitations when applying to large-area devices and flexible substrates [6,7,8]. This method is hard to create multilayer devices since the subsequently superposed thin films often dissolve in the previously coated thin films. Among the alternatives to spin coating, electrospray deposition is attractive due to its simplicity and versatility It has been demonstrated as a technique capable of fabricating large-area organic electronic devices with multiple layers and patterns [14,15,16,17,18]. This technique works with much more dilute solutions with a high material utilization efficiency and circumvents the solubility problem for conjugated polymer thin films [19,20,21]
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