Inkjet printing of tandem OPVs

Jan Kroon^a, Sjoerd Veenstra^a^,^c, Anne Biezemans^a^,^c, Veronique Gevaerts^a^,^c, Quentin Passet^a^,^c, Robin Willems^b^,^c, Ronn Andriessen^b^,^c, Jan Gilot^b^,^c, Tamara Eggenhuisen^b^,^c

^aEnergy research Centre of the Netherlands, Westerduinweg 3, Petten, 1755ZG, Netherlands

^bHolst Centre, Solliance, NL, High Tech Campus, 21, Eindhoven, Netherlands

^cSolliance, High Tech Campus 21, Eindhoven, 5656AE, Netherlands

International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics
Proceedings of International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics 2015 (HOPV15)

Roma, Italy, 2015 May 11th - 13th

Organizer: Filippo De Angelis

Poster, Veronique Gevaerts, 126
Publication date: 5th February 2015

The most efficient organic solar cells to date are using two different active layers in a series connected tandem device. Now these world record OPV devices have efficiencies in the double digits,^1,2 up-scaling and industrialization of the technology is needed. OPV holds great promise to become a cost-effective renewable energy platform, because it can be processed from solution and deposited on flexible substrates using roll-to-roll processing such as inkjet printing. Solution processing of OPVs on industrial scale brings some challenges, such as finding alternative, non-chlorinated solvents and using roll-to-roll compatible processes. Here we present a fully inkjet printed tandem OPV device, which consists of up to 9 sequentially inkjet printed layers as shown in the figure. An alternative structure using ITO and MoO₃/Ag contacts was used in parallel. The inkjet printed layers are made without chlorinated solvents using an industrial scale printhead, making the processing industrial viable. One of the major challenges using inkjet printing is that the formation of the layers (wetting and pinning) depends not only on the solvent (mixture) used for the printing, but also on the surface energy of the layer/material the layer is processed on. The main challenge for inkjet printing this tandem structure was to find a good way to print the recombination contact consisting of a closed PEDOT:PSS layer from a water based solution onto a hydrophobic P3HT:PCBM layer and on top of that a ZnO layer. Previously it was shown that ZnO can be inkjet printed on a PEDOT:PSS layer,³ however, when modifying (commercial) PEDOT:PSS formulations the resulting surface energy of this PEDOT:PSS layer can change and hence the printability of ZnO on top of the PEDOT:PSS can be different. Careful optimization of the full recombination contact was done and tandem devices were successfully inkjet printed. The voltage of the inkjet printed tandem we present here is the sum of the voltages of the subcells, which shows that there are no voltage losses over the recombination contact. The efficiency of the inkjet printed tandems was higher than the efficiencies of the respective single junction devices. These results show that inkjet printing is a promising technique to up-scale the production of tandem OPVs and commercialization is one step closer.
Figure: a) layer stack of the all inkjet printed tandem device, b) J-V curves of the respective single junction and tandem devices with ITO and MoO3/Ag contacts, c) solar cell characteristics of the best devices.
1. Li, G.; Zhu, R.; Yang, Y. Polymer Solar Cells. Nature Photonics 2012, 6, 153-161. 2. You, J.; Dou, L.; Yoshimura, K.; Kato, T.; Ohya, K.; Moriarty, T.; Emery, K.; Chen, C.C.; Gao, J.; Li, G.; Yang, Y. A polymer tandem solar cell with 10.6% power conversion efficiency. Nature Communications 2013, 4, 1446. 3. Eggenhuisen, T.M.; Galagan, Y.; Coenen, E.W.C.; Voorthuijzen, W.P.; Slaats, M.W.L.; Kommeren, S.A.; Shanmuganam, S.; Coenen, M.J.J.; Andriessen, R.; Groen, W.A. Digital fabrication of organic solar cells by inkjet printing using non-halogenated solvents, Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells 2015, 134, 364-372.

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