Photonic sintering of inkjet printed current collecting grids for organic solar cell applications

ITO-free organic solar cells with inkjet printed current collecting grids are demonstrated. For sintering those grids, thermal treatment and its faster alternative, photonic flash sintering, are applied and the characteristics of the resulting metal structures are compared with each other. The electrical potentials and resulting currents in the devices with different sintering conditions are calculated. The flash sintered current collecting grids exhibit clear advantages over thermally sintered grids in terms of geometry and conductivity. Similar conductivities are obtained after 5 s of flash sintering and 6 h of thermal sintering. This finding demonstrates the great potential of flash sintering for the roll-to-roll manufacturing of printed organic solar cells on flexible substrates. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.