High performance organic photovoltaic cells with blade-coated active layers

High performance bulk heterojunction organic photovoltaic (OPV) cells with blade-coated active layers of POD2T-DTBT blended with [6,6]-phenyl-C71-butyric acid methyl ester (PC71BM) are demonstrated in this work. The blade-coated cells exhibit power conversion efficiencies of up to 6.74%, which is comparable to those of conventional spincoated cells but obtained with just a fraction of the material amount used for spincoating. The choice of solvent and the process conditions are manipulated to achieve dense, well-separated morphology which increases the interfacial area for charge dissociation in the blend film. The blade coating technique can be applied in the fabrication of large area, high performance OPV cells with highly efficient materials usage. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.