Large-area Fabrication Research Articles

Rapid fabrication of large-area and uniform surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy substrate of Au nano-hemisphere array and its application in the detection of Malachite Green in tilapia

Abstract Although surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) substrates have achieved high sensitivity, it is still difficult to apply these SERS protocols to the on-site detection of real samples due to the SERS substrate being fabrication-complexed, unstable, reproducible, or unable to be applied in batch production. Here, a large-scale ordered two-dimensional array of Au nano-hemispheres was developed through electron beam vaporization of Au onto the easy-available commercialized anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) template with two-layer nanostructures of different diameters. The uniform Au nano-hemisphere is reliable for SERS detection of malachite green (MG) due to the relative standard deviation (RSD) of the SERS intensities at different locations less than 10%. With the optimized excitation wavelength, solvent effect and pH environment, the linear range of MG detection spans from 10–10 to 10–6 mol/L with a limit of detection (LOD) of 4×10–10 mol/L. The enhancement factor can reach 1.2×106. After extraction with acetonitrile and dichloromethane, MG in the spiked tilapia was detected with satisfactory recovery. The results indicate that the Au nano-hemisphere array can be expected to greatly facilitate SERS practical applications in detecting harmful food additives and chemicals due to the advantages of chemical inertness, physical robustness, simple fabrication, controllability, large-area uniformity, and large-batch production.

Intelligent reversible electrochromic flexible electronic fabric based on electronic ink microcapsules

In the last several decades, electronic ink (e-ink) microcapsules have been extensively employed in display screens owing to their high reflectivity and contrast under visible light irradiation, as well as their flexibility, low cost, and low power consumption. Herein, a simple coating technique serves to combine e-ink microcapsules containing multiple color particles with fabrics to design an intelligent reversible electrochromic flexible electronic fabric. E-ink microcapsules, transparent Ag nanowires (T-AgNWs), and single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) are sequentially and uniformly coated on the surface of the double-layer conductive strip structure composed of conductive fabric and insulating fabric. The electrophoretic discoloration of the e-ink microcapsules can be achieved by applying voltages of a certain magnitude between the bottom conductive fabric strip layer and the T-AgNWs/SWCNT composite conductive layer. Large-area flexible electrochromic fabrics can be formed by weaving strips coated with e-ink microcapsules materials based on the results of the continuous bending and soaking experiments, which has great application potential in the research of adaptive camouflage smart fabrics in the visible light field.

High-conductivity screen-printable silver nanowire Ink for optically transparent flexible radio frequency electronics

Optically transparent conductors have paved the way in various optoelectronic and radio frequency devices where high electrical conductivity and optical transparency with mechanical flexibility, as well as large area fabrication are deemed necessary. Printing techniques are viable for fabricating large-area devices with high mechanical flexibilities. However, the preparation of suitable inks and printing recipes is essential to achieve a high electrical conductivity and transparency. In this study, the best tradeoff between conductivity and optical transmittance was achieved through silver (Ag) nanowires (NWs)-based ink formulation with tuned Ag NW loading, solvent compositions and polymer weight percentages. The ink was deposited through screen-printing, which enabled a large-area and high-resolution patterning of the AgNWs. The washing time of the post-printed films exhibited a decisive effect on the initial conductivity, which was further improved through photonic sintering. During the photonic sintering, the voltages, pulse lengths (μs) and fire rates (Hz) were optimized to obtain the best conductivity of the printed films. Maximum optical transparencies of 78% and 83% were achieved for the conductivities of ∼5.88 × 106 and ∼6.25 × 106 S m−1, respectively. As a proof of concept, a fully printed optically transparent antenna was realized that could operate in a wide frequency band suitable for high-data-rate wireless communication.

Advances in Flexible Optoelectronics Based on Chemical Vapor Deposition‐Grown Graphene (Adv. Funct. Mater. 42/2022)

Flexible Optoelectronics In article number 2203115, Wencai Ren and co-workers review the recent advances and significant developments of chemi cal vapor deposition-grown graphene toward flexi ble optoelectronics. Various prototype devices including photodetectors, organic solar cells, and light emitting diodes are demonstrated. These devices are available to large-area fabrication and have good flexibility, showing great potential to integration of multifunctional wearable systems based on chemical vapor deposition-grown graphene.

High-Throughput Nanopore Fabrication and Classification Using Xe-Ion Irradiation and Automated Pore-Edge Analysis.

Large-area nanopore drilling is a major bottleneck in state-of-the-art nanoporous 2D membrane fabrication protocols. In addition, high-quality structural and statistical descriptions of as-fabricated porous membranes are key to predicting the corresponding membrane-wide permeation properties. In this work, we investigate Xe-ion focused ion beam as a tool for scalable, large-area nanopore fabrication on atomically thin, free-standing molybdenum disulfide. The presented irradiation protocol enables designing ultrathin membranes with tunable porosity and pore dimensions, along with spatial uniformity across large-area substrates. Fabricated nanoporous membranes are then characterized using scanning transmission electron microscopy imaging, and the observed nanopore geometries are analyzed through a pore-edge detection and analysis script. We further demonstrate that the obtained structural and statistical data can be readily passed on to computational and analytical tools to predict the permeation properties at both individual pore and membrane-wide scales. As an example, membranes featuring angstrom-scale pores are investigated in terms of their emerging water and ion flow properties through extensive all-atom molecular dynamics simulations. We believe that the combination of experimental and analytical approaches presented here will yield accurate physics-based property estimates and thus potentially enable a true function-by-design approach to fabrication for applications such as osmotic power generation and desalination/filtration.

Femtosecond large-area fabrication of multi-phase titanium oxide LIPSS on thin films

The effect of the laser beam scanning velocity and overlap on the large-area fabrication of Laser-Induced Periodic Surface Structures (LIPSS), on 400 nm thickness titanium films, is investigated. The experiments were performed in ambient air with well below ablation threshold laser fluence by using a femtosecond laser at a wavelength of 1030 nm with a pulse duration of 270 fs, operating at a repetition rate of 20 kHz.For this purpose, single-line experiments were performed to study the LIPSS formation process as a function of fs-laser-beam scanning velocity. Based on these results, the fabrication of large-area LIPSS pattern was investigated by unidirectional scanning of the fs-laser beam across the sample surface using different lateral spacing. The results show the formation of LSFL and TLIPSS, with different orientation with respect to the polarization of the incident radiation. The analysis of the chemical composition, by microRaman spectroscopy, indicates the formation of a mixture of TiO2 (anatase phase) and Ti2O3 (rutile phase) for high scanning velocities and TiO2 (rutile phase) for low scanning velocities. The chemical composition, spatial period, and depth of the LIPSS show a clear dependence with the laser-beam scanning velocity and overlap.

Balancing the Selective Absorption and Photon-to-Electron Conversion for Semitransparent Organic Photovoltaics with 5.0% Light-Utilization Efficiency.

Efficiently converting invisible light while allowing full visible light transmission is key to achieving high-performance semitransparent organic photovoltaics (ST-OPVs). Here, a detailed balance strategy is explored to optimize the ST-OPV via taking both absorption and carrier dynamics into consideration. Based on this principle, comprehensive optimizations are carried out, including a ternary strategy, donor:acceptor blend ratio, thickness, antireflection, etc., to compromise the invisible energy conversion and visible transmission for high-performance ST-OPVs. As a result, the opaque OPV device exhibits a champion power conversion efficiency of 19.35% (certificated 19.07%), and most strikingly, the best ST-OPV shows a remarkably high light-utilization efficiency of 5.0%, where the efficiency and the average visible transmission are 12.95% and 38.67%, respectively. An efficiency of 12.09% is achieved on the upscaled device with an area of 1.05 cm2 , demonstrating its promise for large-area fabrication. These results are among the best values for ST-OPVs. Besides, it is demonstrated that the ST-OPV exhibits good infrared light-reflection capability for thermal control. This work provides a rational design of balancing the absorbing selectivity and photon-to-electron conversion for high-performance ST-OPVs, and may pave the way toward the practical application of solar windows.

Research progress on improving the performance of MoS2 photodetector

Two-dimensional layered materials have attracted increasing attention due to their unique structures and outstanding mechanical and physical properties. Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) possess unique physical properties and optical properties that meet the basic requirements of photodetectors. As representative TMDs, MoS2 has excellent mechanical properties due to its strong covalent bonds and great elasticity. The monolayer MoS2 has a direct bandgap of around 1.8 eV. In addition, MoS2-based optoelectronic devices have high switching ratio and carrier mobility. However, due to the characteristic of atomic-scale thickness, the light-harvesting ability of layered TMDs is very weak, which largely limits the responsivity and detection rate of photodetectors, thus inhibiting the practical application of such devices. The slow photo response rate is also a problem that often occurs in TMDs devices. Researchers have reported several strategies to improve the performance of TMDs-based photodetectors. At present, there are two main optimization schemes, namely surface modification, and heterostructure construction. The utilization of metal plasmon effect and the construction of heterojunctions are both effective means to improve the performance of MoS2 photodetectors. These schemes can improve the light absorption capability of MoS2 and broaden the range of light detection. However, there are also disadvantages of the complex processes and limited enhancement effects in large-area fabrication. Therefore, it is of vital significance to further explore the response range and performance of MoS2 photodetectors.

Organic Photodetectors with Extended Spectral Response Range Assisted by Plasmonic Hot-Electron Injection.

Organic photodetectors (OPDs) have aroused intensive attention for signal detection in industrial and scientific applications due to their advantages including low cost, mechanical flexibility, and large-area fabrication. As one of the most common organic light-emitting materials, 8-hydroxyquinolinato aluminum (Alq3) has an absorption wavelength edge of 460 nm. Here, through the introduction of Ag nanoparticles (Ag NPs), the spectral response range of the Alq3-based OPD was successfully extended to the near-infrared range. It was found that introducing Ag NPs can induce rich plasmonic resonances, generating plenty of hot electrons, which could be injected into Alq3 and then be collected. Moreover, as a by-product of introducing Ag NPs, the dark current was suppressed by around two orders of magnitude by forming a Schottky junction on the cathode side. These two effects in combination produced photoelectric signals with significant contrasts at wavelengths beyond the Alq3 absorption band. It was found that the OPD with Ag NPs can stably generate electric signals under illumination by pulsed 850 nm LED, while the output of the reference device included no signal. Our work contributes to the development of low-cost, broadband OPDs for applications in flexible electronics, bio-imaging sensors, etc.

An organic synaptic circuit: toward flexible and biocompatible organic neuromorphic processing

In the nervous system synapses play a critical role in computation. In neuromorphic systems, biologically inspired hardware implementations of spiking neural networks, electronic synaptic circuits pass signals between silicon neurons by integrating pre-synaptic voltage pulses and converting them into post-synaptic currents, which are scaled by the synaptic weight parameter. The overwhelming majority of neuromorphic systems are implemented using inorganic, mainly silicon, technology. As such, they are physically rigid, require expensive fabrication equipment and high fabrication temperatures, are limited to small-area fabrication, and are difficult to interface with biological tissue. Organic electronics are based on electronic properties of carbon-based molecules and polymers and offer benefits including physical flexibility, low cost, low temperature, and large-area fabrication, as well as biocompatibility, all unavailable to inorganic electronics. Here, we demonstrate an organic differential-pair integrator synaptic circuit, a biologically realistic synapse model, implemented using physically flexible complementary organic electronics. The synapse is shown to convert input voltage spikes into output current traces with biologically realistic time scales. We characterize circuit’s responses based on various synaptic parameters, including gain and weighting voltages, time-constant, synaptic capacitance, and circuit response due to inputs of different frequencies. Time constants comparable to those of biological synapses and the neurons are critical in processing real-world sensory signals such as speech, or bio-signals measured from the body. For processing even slower signals, e.g., on behavioral time scales, we demonstrate time constants in excess of two seconds, while biologically plausible time constants are achieved by deploying smaller synaptic capacitors. We measure the circuit synaptic response to input voltage spikes and present the circuit response properties using custom-made circuit simulations, which are in good agreement with the measured behavior.

A Low-Cost Resilient Chalcogenide Ion-Sensitive Electrode for Copper Sensing With an LoD $< $20 ppb

A solid-state ion-sensitive electrode for the monitoring of copper metal ions in water based on a CdS chalcogenide thin film is fabricated using a low-temperature process. This sensor exhibits a limit of detection of 18.7 ppb. A sensing layer consisting of a chalcogenide material was deposited over a conducting substrate using a low-temperature chemical bath deposition process. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and potentiometric measurements were carried out to analyze the response of the sensing layer to the copper ions in water samples. The sensor yields a monotonic response in the concentration range of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">${1\times 10^{-3}}$</tex-math></inline-formula> to <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">${1\times 10^{-7}}\ \mathrm{M}$</tex-math></inline-formula> with a response time of a few seconds. The resulting sensor is compatible with large-area fabrication techniques on flexible substrates.

Challenging Bendable Organic Single Crystal and Transistor Arrays with High Mobility and Durability toward Flexible Electronics.

Bendable organic single crystals are promising candidates for flexible electronics owing to their superior charge-transport properties. However, large-area high-quality organic single crystals are rarely available on the polymer substrates generally used in flexible electronics. Here, a surface-assisted assembly strategy based on a polymer modification, poly(amic acid) (PAA), is developed to grow large-area organic singe crystals on polymer substrates using a simple drop-casting method. The unique surface properties of PAA that enable molecular solution superwetting and promote molecular ordered assembly produce an extraordinary self-driven "meniscus-guided coating" behavior, enabling the fabrication of millimeter-sized, highly aligned organic single crystals for a variety of organic semiconductors. Organic field-effect transistors based on a mode molecule of 2,7-dioctyl[1]benzothieno[3,2-b][1]benzothiophene demonstrate the highest (average) mobility of 18.6 cm2 V-1 s-1 (15.9 cm2 V-1 s-1 ), attractively low operating voltage of -3V, and high flexible durability. The results shed light on the large-area fabrication of organic single crystals on polymer dielectrics toward high-performance and integrated plastic electronics.

Substrate Optimization of Flexible Temperature Sensor for Wearable Applications

In flexible electronic devices and sensor fabrication, substrate selection is essential as it determines different parameters and techniques. This paper aims to find an efficient substrate selection approach for flexible and wearable electronic applications. A hybridized Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) technique, namely the Analytic Hierarchy Tradeoff Ranking Technique (AH-TOR), is used to select the most suitable flexible substrate out of the several widely used options for the temperature sensor. The selection of the best substrate for the said application is made based on various properties. In this case, AHP is used to evaluate the criteria weights, while the TOR method determines the weights of alternatives. Further, different PEDOT: PSS-based temperature sensors have been fabricated to validate the optimization technique. Based on the performance of the sensors, it is found that the sensitivity of Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) is superior, and the sensitivity of PET is approximately 53.3% better than Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and 47.4% superior to Polyvinyl chloride (PVC). The result is in sync with the optimization, where PET is at the top among all other alternatives. This method will be helpful in large-area sensor fabrication and manufacturing of flexible electronic devices.

50 °C low-temperature ALD SnO2 driven by H2O2 for efficient perovskite and perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells

Although perovskite solar cells (PSCs) based on SnO2 have reached a power conversion efficiency (PCE) over 25%, large-scale fabrication remains the main obstacle to the commercialization of PSCs. Therefore, considering the process compatibility, low-temperature processing and large-area fabrication technologies have received widespread attention as those are ideal for upscaling of single and tandem devices. Herein, we demonstrated an effective atomic layer deposition (ALD) process by using H2O2 as an oxygen source and the deposition temperatures can be lowered up to 50 °C due to the high activity of H2O2. The low temperature deposition enables conformal coverage of the substrate and results in a pinhole-free film with high optical transmittance, excellent electron extraction properties, and large area uniformity. Notably, a high PCE of 20.70% is achieved for single junction PSCs based on ALD-SnO2 (50 °C). When the ALD-SnO2 applied to p-i-n structure perovskite/silicon heterojunction tandem solar cell, an efficiency of 26.67% was obtained. The results demonstrate the potential of the low-temperature ALD processed metal oxide for large-scale manufacturing of optoelectronic devices with competitive performances.

Sequential vacuum-evaporated perovskite solar cells with more than 24% efficiency.

Vacuum evaporation is promising for the high-throughput fabrication of perovskite solar cells (PSCs) because of its solvent-free characteristic, precise control of film thickness, and compatibility with large-scale production. Nevertheless, the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of PSCs fabricated by vacuum evaporation lags behind that of solution-processed PSCs. Here, we report a Cl-containing alloy-mediated sequential vacuum evaporation approach to fabricate perovskite films. The presence of Cl in the alloy facilitates organic ammonium halide diffusion and the subsequent perovskite conversion reaction, leading to homogeneous pinhole-free perovskite films with few defects. The resulting PSCs yield a PCE of 24.42%, 23.44% (certified 22.6%), and 19.87% for 0.1, 1.0, and 14.4 square centimeters (mini-module, aperture area), respectively. The unencapsulated PSCs show good stability with negligible decline in performance after storage in dry air for more than 4000 hours. Our method provides a reproducible approach for scalable fabrication of large-area, high-efficiency PSCs and other perovskite-based optoelectronics.

Excellent omnidirectional light trapping properties of inverted micro-pyramid structured silicon by copper catalyzed chemical etching

Nano/micro structuring of silicon (Si) attracts a lot of research interests for minimizing the reflective losses (>30%) of Si surface limiting the solar cell performance majorly. Here, arrays of inverted micro-pyramids Si (IP–Si) have been fabricated on large area of the solar-grade, as-cut Si wafers by a simple, one-step copper (Cu) catalyzed chemical etching (CuCCE) in aqueous etch bath of 5 mM-Cu(NO3)2/4.6M-HF/0.55M − H2O2 at 50 °C. Influence of etching time is investigated under constant etch bath parameters and starting surface properties of the Si wafers. The CuCCE mechanism is compared with the standard alkali (aq. KOH) texturing of Si(100) wafers. The formation of inverted structure is attributed to Cu nanoparticles catalyzed localized anisotropic as well as isotropic etching of Si(100) as compared to only anisotropic etching in the KOH texturing. The IP-Si surface offers a superior light trapping ability in broad spectral range compared to the conventional KOH based random upright micro-pyramids (UP–Si). The IP-Si surface could achieve solar weighted reflectance (SWR) as low as <7% in 400–1000 nm spectral range as compared to ∼14% of the UP-Si surfaces. This has been attributed to higher percentage of triple bounce interaction of the incident light with Si surface offered by the IP-Si. Further, the IP-Si offers enhanced omnidirectional light trapping for wide angle of incidence (AOI) of light (−40° to +40°) as compared to that in UP-Si. The enhanced omnidirectional light trapping of the IP-Si and its mechanism has further been explained by finite difference time domain (FDTD) simulation. Further, potential of IP-Si for enhanced solar cell performance is proposed on the basis of theoretical calculation of total photocurrent for planar, UP-Si and IP-Si surfaces. A simple, economic yet effective process for large area fabrication of the inverted micro/nano-pyramid arrays of Si with enhanced and broad band omnidirectional light trapping properties has been shown which has potential for efficient Si solar cell application.

Fabrication of large-area and highly uniform interlaced silicon grating arrays for high-performance SERS substrates

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) provides super ability for detecting trace analytes. However, effective plasmonic architectures and optimal fabrication routes for SERS substrates remained to be further revealed in terms of the cost and performance to promote their applications. In this work, mechano-chemical scanning probe lithography (SPL) was developed to fabricate large-area and high-homogeneity interlaced silicon grating arrays that are hardly achieved by conventional lithography towards high-performance SERS substrates. It was found that this route presented excellent ability for fabricating high-quality groove and hillock structures by controlling the mechanically-driven defects and subsequent wet etching, thereby providing unlimited design diversity for optimizing SERS substrates. Upon designing the layout by finite-difference time-domain simulations, optimizing fabricating processes, and investigating involved selective etching mechanism, various grating patterns were controllably manufactured using the mechano-chemical SPL. SERS spectra of malachite green absorbed on interlaced grating substrates demonstrated an impressive sensitivity and excellent reproducibility with relative deviations of up to 4.09 and 6.08% for batch-to-batch substrate and intra-substrate sampling. This study provides a promising route for customizable and cost-effective fabrication of SERS substrates for chemical and biological sensing.

Characterization of hierarchical lath martensite microstructure in low carbon steels using ultra-high voltage TEM and SEM-EBSD analysis

Lath martensite is a heterogenous microstructure in low carbon steels and plays an important part in microstructure for the high strength steels. The complex martensitic structure has been clarified as the hierarchical block and packet structures using SEM observations and electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) analysis. As the result of variant analysis, it is found that the block consists of sub-blocks and the block size and distribution seem to be new key factors to control the mechanical properties. Each block is further subdivided by laths, which are the finest structural units in lath martensite. The morphology of laths and their variants in low carbon steels has been further investigated using the ultra-high voltage TEM (UHVEM) with 3MeV in accelerated voltage. Based on a comparison of UHVEM and SEM observations for the same field of view, it is found that the laths have a further hierarchical organization with twinned morphology and the fragmented structure within the laths. Two plane crystal analysis of the twin in a lath has been carried out using SEM-EBSD analysis after Xe-FIB large area fabrication process, resulting in the identification of the twin morphology such as the {112} twin plane perpendicular to the {110} habit plane and along the <111> direction. Although several types of twinned morphology such as the long and short length are observed in the lath microstructure under TEM observations, the twinning structure observed in various forms is explained by a simple model in the present study.

Better colloidal lithography: Tilt-rotate evaporation overcomes the limits of plasma etching

Colloidal lithography (CL) is a promising method for large-area fabrication of nanohole and nanodot arrays with applications in optical biosensing, separations, and magnetic data storage. However, reducing the diameter of the polystyrene sphere mask by plasma etching unavoidably increases their coefficient of variation (CV) and deforms their shape, thereby limiting the pitch-to-hole-diameter ratio of the resulting nanohole array to less than 3:1 and the minimum hole size to 200 nm with a 10% or better CV. We show that tilt-rotate evaporation colloidal lithography (TRE-CL) breaks the trade-off between hole diameter and polydispersity by leveraging glancing angle evaporation, not plasma etching, to adjust the hole size. TRE-CL allows pitch-to-hole-diameter ratios as high as 7:1 and nanohole diameters down to 60 nm while maintaining a nearly constant CV below 10% and hole circularity above 91%. We transfer these hole arrays into ultrathin Si3N4 films to form nearly-monodisperse microsieves for separation applications. Furthermore, we extend TRE-CL to fabricate adhesion-layer-free plasmonic Au nanodot arrays down to 70 nm in diameter with 10% CV.

Highly efficient layer-by-layer deposition solar cells achieved with halogen-free solvents and molecular engineering of non-fullerene acceptors

Chemical modifications of non-fullerene acceptors (NFAs) and halogen-free solvent processes play vital roles in developing organic solar cells (OSCs). This study developed two new, halogen-free solvent-processable NFAs (BTA-UD-4F and BTA-4F) with and without an undecyl chain on the thienothiophene moiety based on the n-hexyl side chain on benzotriazole moiety. Thus, affording high performance OSCs with a halogen-free solvent (o-xylene) processed active layers. BTA-UD-4F (PM6:BTA-UD-4F, efficiency: 14.32%) achieved a higher absorption co-efficient, charge carrier mobility, enhanced solubility, suppressed charge recombination, and good compatibility with the host blend (PM6:Y7, efficiency:15.10%) compared to BTA-4F (PM6:BTA-4F, efficiency:9.41%). Moreover, BTA-UD-4F achieved an impressive power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 17.55% and an open-circuit voltage (Voc), short-circuit current density (Jsc), and fill factor (FF) of 0.85 V, 27.40 mA/cm2, and 75.18%, respectively, by the ternary layer-by-layer (LBL) deposition (PM6/Y7:BTA-UD-4F) OSCs, which is one of the highest PCEs halogen-free solvent processed for LBL-type OSCs. Importantly, the ternary LBL deposition devices accomplished good active layer film morphology, higher excition efficiency with halogen free solvents compared to the bulk heterojunction (BHJ) devices. In contrast, the BHJ ternary OSCs exhibited a PCE of 16.18%. Furthermore, >15% PCEs, up to > 300 nm thickness were achieved, highlighting the potential for large-area device fabrication. These results highlight the huge research potential for the LBL deposition architecture to be used for future OSCs applications.