Combinatorial Screening of Polymer/Fullerene Blends for Solar Cells by Inkjet Printing
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Combinatorial Screening of Polymer/Fullerene Blends for Solar Cells by Inkjet Printing Anke Teichler, Jolke Perelaer and Ulrich S. Schubert Laboratory of Organic and Macromolecular Chemistry (IOMC) and Jena Center for Soft Matter (JCSM), Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Jena, Germany. E-mail: [email protected] or [email protected]
ABSTRACT Inkjet printing is a highly material-efficient solution deposition technique that enables the preparation of thin-film libraries using little amounts of materials. As a reproducible and precise patterning technique inkjet printing can be integrated into a combinatorial screening workflow that allowed the systematic characterization of thin-film properties of newly developed materials as well as the methodical investigation of preparation parameter that influence the performance of the inkjet printed layers. This contribution provides a demonstration of a combinatorial screening workflow that utilizes inkjet printing to evaluate structure-property relationships of polymer/fullerene blends for the application in organic photovoltaics. Using this approach it is shown that optimized blend compositions as well as printing conditions lead to improved performances of organic solar cell devices. INTRODUCTION In order to develop new materials or processes for energy consumption via solar energy harvesting a large number of points need to be addressed to evolve cheap, efficient and stable devices that can compete with other energy harvesting processes. In contrast to silicon-based photovoltaics organic solar cells serve about the possibility to be cheap in materials and production. Although organic photovoltaics are cheaper than other photovoltaic devices, they cannot yet compete with other solar cell architectures in terms of efficiency and lifetime, but many researchers evolved big interest in order to improve their efficiencies and, subsequently, enhance their competitive capability.[1] In recent research, a main task addresses the synthesis of new efficient materials with optimal properties for the use in organic photovoltaics,[2] but only a few reports can be found that deal with the systematic and comparative screening of these materials.[3] In particular, there exists no general procedure for the preparation of polymer solar cells, because every new polymer class needs to be tested separately according to their ideal processing conditions. If we take into consideration, that not only new polymers and, consequently, also new polymer/fullerene combinations require to be tested, but also processing conditions like solvents, concentrations and film thicknesses, an enormous number of films need to be investigated concerning their possible application as active layer in organic solar cells. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a method that allows the systematic investigation of each influencing
parameter and, subsequently, to identify structure-property relationships that are necessary to achieve a more detailed knowledge about the impact of certain conditions to
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