High Performance Organic Solar Cells Processed by Blade Coating in Air from a Benign Food Additive Solution

Solution processable conjugated organic materials have gained tremendous interest motivated by their potential of low cost, lightweight and especially easy manufacturing of large-area and flexible electronics. Toxic halogen-containing solvents have been widely used in the processing of organic electronics, particularly organic photovoltaics (OPVs). To transition this technology to more commercially attractive manufacturing approaches, removing these halogenated solvents remains one of the key challenges. Our morphological (hard/soft X-ray scattering) and calorimetric characterizations reveal that using o-methylanisole, a certified food additive, as processing solvent can achieve similar crystalline properties and domain spacing/purity with that achieved by widely used binary halogenated solvents (chlorobenzene and 1,8-diiodooctane), thus yielding comparable photovoltaic performance in spin-tasted films. To move a step forward, we further present the potential of o-methylanisole as processing solvent in the blade-coating of several cases of OPVs in air. Remarkably, this single nonhazardous solvent yields similar to 8.4% and similar to 5.2% efficiency in OPVs by respectively blade-coating PBDT-TSR:PC71BM and all-polymeric PBDT-TS1:PPDIODT in ambient air, which are among the highest values for the respective kind of device. We postulate this simple nonhazardous solvent approach will also be applicable in the large area roll-to-roll coating and industrial scale printing of high-efficiency OPVs in air.