Printing highly efficient organic solar cells

The technological attraction in organic solar cells is their compatibility to printing processes. However, up to today, nearly no literature on printed organic solar cells have been published and the major body of the research work was done by spin coating or blading techniques. Transferring the spin-coating or doctor blading process currently used for the fabrication of bulk heterojunction solar cell to a printing process holds morphological challenges that have not been observed or reported up to today. We highlight these challenges and we show that inkjet printing of organic bulk heterojunction solar cells requires completely novel approaches and skill sets compared to the current state of the art. By adjusting the chemical properties of the poly(3-hexylthiophene) polymer donor and by using our recently developed inkjet solvent mixture, we have gained control over the nanomorphology of poly(3-hexylthlophene):fullerene blends during the printing process and report a new record power conversion efficiency of 3.5% for inkjet printed poly(3-hexylthiophene):fullerene based solar cells.