skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Flow-enhanced solution printing of all-polymer solar cells

Abstract

Morphology control of solution coated solar cell materials presents a key challenge limiting their device performance and commercial viability. Here we present a new concept for controlling phase separation during solution printing using an all-polymer bulk heterojunction solar cell as a model system. The key aspect of our method lies in the design of fluid flow using a microstructured printing blade, on the basis of the hypothesis of flow-induced polymer crystallization. Our flow design resulted in a similar to 90% increase in the donor thin film crystallinity and reduced microphase separated donor and acceptor domain sizes. The improved morphology enhanced all metrics of solar cell device performance across various printing conditions, specifically leading to higher short-circuit current, fill factor, open circuit voltage and significantly reduced device-to-device variation. However, we expect our design concept to have broad applications beyond all-polymer solar cells because of its simplicity and versatility.

Authors:
 [1];  [1];  [2]; ORCiD logo [2]; ORCiD logo [3];  [2];  [4];  [2];  [2];  [1];  [2];  [5];  [1];  [4];  [6];  [7];  [1]
  1. SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States); Stanford Univ., Stanford, CA (United States)
  2. Stanford Univ., Stanford, CA (United States)
  3. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  4. Peking Univ., Beijing (China)
  5. Sungkyunkwan Univ. (SKKU), Suwon (Republic of Korea); Stanford Univ., Stanford, CA (United States)
  6. SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
  7. SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States); Dresden Univ. of Technology, Dresden (Germany)
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), Menlo Park, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Science (SC)
OSTI Identifier:
1238256
Grant/Contract Number:  
AC03-76SF00515
Resource Type:
Journal Article: Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
Nature Communications
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Volume: 6; Journal ID: ISSN 2041-1723
Publisher:
Nature Publishing Group
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
36 MATERIALS SCIENCE; 14 SOLAR ENERGY; chemical sciences; fluids and plasma physics; physical chemistry; materials science

Citation Formats

Diao, Ying, Zhou, Yan, Kurosawa, Tadanori, Shaw, Leo, Wang, Cheng, Park, Steve, Guo, Yikun, Reinspach, Julia A., Gu, Kevin, Gu, Xiaodan, Tee, Benjamin C. K., Pang, Changhyun, Yan, Hongping, Zhao, Dahui, Toney, Michael F., Mannsfeld, Stefan C. B., and Bao, Zhenan. Flow-enhanced solution printing of all-polymer solar cells. United States: N. p., 2015. Web. doi:10.1038/ncomms8955.
Diao, Ying, Zhou, Yan, Kurosawa, Tadanori, Shaw, Leo, Wang, Cheng, Park, Steve, Guo, Yikun, Reinspach, Julia A., Gu, Kevin, Gu, Xiaodan, Tee, Benjamin C. K., Pang, Changhyun, Yan, Hongping, Zhao, Dahui, Toney, Michael F., Mannsfeld, Stefan C. B., & Bao, Zhenan. Flow-enhanced solution printing of all-polymer solar cells. United States. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms8955
Diao, Ying, Zhou, Yan, Kurosawa, Tadanori, Shaw, Leo, Wang, Cheng, Park, Steve, Guo, Yikun, Reinspach, Julia A., Gu, Kevin, Gu, Xiaodan, Tee, Benjamin C. K., Pang, Changhyun, Yan, Hongping, Zhao, Dahui, Toney, Michael F., Mannsfeld, Stefan C. B., and Bao, Zhenan. 2015. "Flow-enhanced solution printing of all-polymer solar cells". United States. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms8955. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1238256.
@article{osti_1238256,
title = {Flow-enhanced solution printing of all-polymer solar cells},
author = {Diao, Ying and Zhou, Yan and Kurosawa, Tadanori and Shaw, Leo and Wang, Cheng and Park, Steve and Guo, Yikun and Reinspach, Julia A. and Gu, Kevin and Gu, Xiaodan and Tee, Benjamin C. K. and Pang, Changhyun and Yan, Hongping and Zhao, Dahui and Toney, Michael F. and Mannsfeld, Stefan C. B. and Bao, Zhenan},
abstractNote = {Morphology control of solution coated solar cell materials presents a key challenge limiting their device performance and commercial viability. Here we present a new concept for controlling phase separation during solution printing using an all-polymer bulk heterojunction solar cell as a model system. The key aspect of our method lies in the design of fluid flow using a microstructured printing blade, on the basis of the hypothesis of flow-induced polymer crystallization. Our flow design resulted in a similar to 90% increase in the donor thin film crystallinity and reduced microphase separated donor and acceptor domain sizes. The improved morphology enhanced all metrics of solar cell device performance across various printing conditions, specifically leading to higher short-circuit current, fill factor, open circuit voltage and significantly reduced device-to-device variation. However, we expect our design concept to have broad applications beyond all-polymer solar cells because of its simplicity and versatility.},
doi = {10.1038/ncomms8955},
url = {https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1238256}, journal = {Nature Communications},
issn = {2041-1723},
number = ,
volume = 6,
place = {United States},
year = {Wed Aug 12 00:00:00 EDT 2015},
month = {Wed Aug 12 00:00:00 EDT 2015}
}

Journal Article:
Free Publicly Available Full Text
Publisher's Version of Record

Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 215 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

Save / Share:

Works referenced in this record:

Solar cells with one-day energy payback for the factories of the future
journal, January 2012


Fabrication and processing of polymer solar cells: A review of printing and coating techniques
journal, April 2009


Roll-to-Roll fabrication of large area functional organic materials
journal, October 2012


All polymer photovoltaics: From small inverted devices to large roll-to-roll coated and printed solar cells
journal, May 2013


Efficient planar heterojunction perovskite solar cells by vapour deposition
journal, September 2013


Morphological Control for High Performance, Solution-Processed Planar Heterojunction Perovskite Solar Cells
journal, September 2013


Cheap solar cells tempt businesses
journal, September 2014


Towards low-cost, environmentally friendly printed chalcopyrite and kesterite solar cells
journal, January 2014


Comparison of the device physics principles of planar and radial p-n junction nanorod solar cells
journal, June 2005


Phase Separation in Bulk Heterojunctions of Semiconducting Polymers and Fullerenes for Photovoltaics
journal, April 2014


Bulk Heterojunction Solar Cells: Morphology and Performance Relationships
journal, May 2014


Polymer solar cells
journal, February 2012


Solution-processed small-molecule solar cells with 6.7% efficiency
journal, November 2011


High Performance All-Polymer Solar Cell via Polymer Side-Chain Engineering
journal, March 2014


Absolute Measurement of Domain Composition and Nanoscale Size Distribution Explains Performance in PTB7:PC 71 BM Solar Cells
journal, October 2012


Time-Resolved Structural Evolution of Additive-Processed Bulk Heterojunction Solar Cells
journal, February 2012


In situ measurement of power conversion efficiency and molecular ordering during thermal annealing in P3HT:PCBM bulk heterojunction solar cells
journal, January 2011


“Solvent Annealing” Effect in Polymer Solar Cells Based on Poly(3-hexylthiophene) and Methanofullerenes
journal, July 2007


Polarized X-ray scattering reveals non-crystalline orientational ordering in organic films
journal, April 2012


Polymer-Fullerene Miscibility: A Metric for Screening New Materials for High-Performance Organic Solar Cells
journal, September 2012


Aggregation and morphology control enables multiple cases of high-efficiency polymer solar cells
journal, November 2014


Observation of long-range exciton diffusion in highly ordered organic semiconductors
journal, October 2010


Relationship between Crystalline Order and Exciton Diffusion Length in Molecular Organic Semiconductors
journal, March 2010


Dependence of Exciton Diffusion Length on Crystalline Order in Conjugated Polymers
journal, December 2013


Relation between absorption and crystallinity of poly(3-hexylthiophene)/fullerene films for plastic solar cells
journal, February 2006


A Mechanistic Understanding of Processing Additive-Induced Efficiency Enhancement in Bulk Heterojunction Organic Solar Cells
journal, October 2013


Microstructure formation in molecular and polymer semiconductors assisted by nucleation agents
journal, June 2013


A strong regioregularity effect in self-organizing conjugated polymer films and high-efficiency polythiophene:fullerene solar cells
journal, February 2006


Performance, morphology and photophysics of high open-circuit voltage, low band gap all-polymer solar cells
journal, January 2015


Polymer donor–polymer acceptor (all-polymer) solar cells
journal, April 2013


Stability of Polymer Solar Cells
journal, December 2011


All-Polymer Bulk Heterojuction Solar Cells with 4.8% Efficiency Achieved by Solution Processing from a Co-Solvent
journal, July 2014


All-Polymer Solar Cells from Perylene Diimide Based Copolymers: Material Design and Phase Separation Control
journal, February 2011


Morphology-Performance Relationships in High-Efficiency All-Polymer Solar Cells
journal, October 2013


High‐Performance Organic Thin‐Film Transistors through Solution‐Sheared Deposition of Small‐Molecule Organic Semiconductors
journal, July 2008


Tuning charge transport in solution-sheared organic semiconductors using lattice strain
journal, December 2011


Solution coating of large-area organic semiconductor thin films with aligned single-crystalline domains
journal, June 2013


Morphology control strategies for solution-processed organic semiconductor thin films
journal, January 2014


Hydrodynamically induced crystallization of polymers from solution: III. Morphology
journal, April 1970


Observation of Polymer Conformation Hysteresis in Extensional Flow
journal, September 2003


Flow-induced mixing, demixing, and phase transitions in polymeric fluids
journal, January 1992


Time dependence of shear and normal stresses of polystyrene and poly(ethylene oxide) solutions
journal, November 1973


An experimental study of the kinetics of polymer crystallization during shear flow
journal, March 1976


Structure Development during Shear Flow-Induced Crystallization of i-PP:  In-Situ Small-Angle X-ray Scattering Study
journal, December 2000


Understanding Polymorphism in Organic Semiconductor Thin Films through Nanoconfinement
journal, November 2014


Flow-induced crystallization during isotactic polypropylene film casting
journal, January 2011


Real-time orientation and crystallinity measurements during the isotactic polypropylene film-casting process
journal, March 2003


Quantitative Determination of Organic Semiconductor Microstructure from the Molecular to Device Scale
journal, June 2012


Quantification of Thin Film Crystallographic Orientation Using X-ray Diffraction with an Area Detector
journal, June 2010


Molecular Order in High-Efficiency Polymer/Fullerene Bulk Heterojunction Solar Cells
journal, September 2011


Nanomorphology of Bulk Heterojunction Photovoltaic Thin Films Probed with Resonant Soft X-ray Scattering
journal, August 2010


Soft X-ray characterisation of organic semiconductor films
journal, January 2013


Mechanism for Stripe Pattern Formation on Hydrophilic Surfaces by Using Convective Self-Assembly
journal, July 2009


Nanoparticle Stripes, Grids, and Ribbons Produced by Flow Coating
journal, September 2010


Soft x-ray scattering facility at the Advanced Light Source with real-time data processing and analysis
journal, April 2012


Polymer Solar Cells
journal, January 1991


Morphological Control for High Performance, Solution-Processed Planar Heterojunction Perovskite Solar Cells
journal, September 2013


Relationship between Crystalline Order and Exciton Diffusion Length in Molecular Organic Semiconductors
journal, March 2010


Nanoparticle Stripes, Grids, and Ribbons Produced by Flow Coating
journal, September 2010


Stability of Polymer Solar Cells
journal, December 2011


All-Polymer Bulk Heterojuction Solar Cells with 4.8% Efficiency Achieved by Solution Processing from a Co-Solvent
journal, July 2014


Real-time orientation and crystallinity measurements during the isotactic polypropylene film-casting process
journal, March 2003


Roll-to-Roll fabrication of large area functional organic materials
journal, October 2012


Polymer donor–polymer acceptor (all-polymer) solar cells
journal, April 2013


Measurement and modelling of the film casting process 1. Width distribution along draw direction
journal, October 2001


Quantitative Determination of Organic Semiconductor Microstructure from the Molecular to Device Scale
journal, June 2012


Bulk Heterojunction Solar Cells: Morphology and Performance Relationships
journal, May 2014


Time-Resolved Structural Evolution of Additive-Processed Bulk Heterojunction Solar Cells
journal, February 2012


Understanding Polymorphism in Organic Semiconductor Thin Films through Nanoconfinement
journal, November 2014


Mechanism for Stripe Pattern Formation on Hydrophilic Surfaces by Using Convective Self-Assembly
journal, July 2009


Quantification of Thin Film Crystallographic Orientation Using X-ray Diffraction with an Area Detector
journal, June 2010


Structure Development during Shear Flow-Induced Crystallization of i-PP:  In-Situ Small-Angle X-ray Scattering Study
journal, December 2000


Nanomorphology of Bulk Heterojunction Photovoltaic Thin Films Probed with Resonant Soft X-ray Scattering
journal, August 2010


Molecular Order in High-Efficiency Polymer/Fullerene Bulk Heterojunction Solar Cells
journal, September 2011


Solution-processed small-molecule solar cells with 6.7% efficiency
journal, November 2011


Flow induced crystallisation of polymers
journal, January 2014


Comparison of the device physics principles of planar and radial p-n junction nanorod solar cells
journal, June 2005


Soft x-ray scattering facility at the Advanced Light Source with real-time data processing and analysis
journal, April 2012


Observation of Polymer Conformation Hysteresis in Extensional Flow
journal, September 2003


Phase Separation in Bulk Heterojunctions of Semiconducting Polymers and Fullerenes for Photovoltaics
journal, April 2014


Works referencing / citing this record:

Solution-Processed Nanoporous Organic Semiconductor Thin Films: Toward Health and Environmental Monitoring of Volatile Markers
journal, May 2017


Effect of Nonconjugated Spacers on Mechanical Properties of Semiconducting Polymers for Stretchable Transistors
journal, September 2018


Revealing the Impact of F4-TCNQ as Additive on Morphology and Performance of High-Efficiency Nonfullerene Organic Solar Cells
journal, November 2018


Epidermal Inorganic Optoelectronics for Blood Oxygen Measurement
journal, February 2017


Balanced Partnership between Donor and Acceptor Components in Nonfullerene Organic Solar Cells with >12% Efficiency
journal, March 2018


Conjugated Carbon Cyclic Nanorings as Additives for Intrinsically Stretchable Semiconducting Polymers
journal, September 2019


A Narrow‐Bandgap n‐Type Polymer Semiconductor Enabling Efficient All‐Polymer Solar Cells
journal, September 2019


Recent Progress in Inkjet‐Printed Thin‐Film Transistors
journal, January 2019


Enhancing Molecular Alignment and Charge Transport of Solution-Sheared Semiconducting Polymer Films by the Electrical-Blade Effect
journal, May 2018


The Motivation for and Challenges to Scaling Down Organic Field‐Effect Transistors
journal, April 2019


Structure Evolution of Oligomer Fused-Ring Electron Acceptors toward High Efficiency of As-Cast Polymer Solar Cells
journal, July 2016


Multiple Cases of Efficient Nonfullerene Ternary Organic Solar Cells Enabled by an Effective Morphology Control Method
journal, December 2017


Photoactive Blend Morphology Engineering through Systematically Tuning Aggregation in All-Polymer Solar Cells
journal, January 2018


Polymersolarzellen: Fortschritt, Herausforderungen und Perspektiven
journal, March 2019


Imide‐Functionalized Polymer Semiconductors
journal, December 2018


Challenges to the Stability of Active Layer Materials in Organic Solar Cells
journal, January 2020


Fiber-Shaped Perovskite Solar Cells with High Power Conversion Efficiency
journal, March 2016


Non-fullerene acceptors for organic solar cells
journal, February 2018


High-resolution patterning of solution-processable materials via externally engineered pinning of capillary bridges
journal, January 2018


Next-generation organic photovoltaics based on non-fullerene acceptors
journal, February 2018


A novel high-performance electrode architecture for supercapacitors: Fe 2 O 3 nanocube and carbon nanotube functionalized carbon
journal, January 2017


Vapor phase organic chemistry to deposit conjugated polymer films on arbitrary substrates
journal, January 2017


Efficient and thermally stable all-polymer solar cells based on a fluorinated wide-bandgap polymer donor with high crystallinity
journal, January 2018


Pt complex-based terpolymer acceptors linked through ancillary ligand for all-polymer solar cells
journal, January 2018


Aggregation control in natural brush-printed conjugated polymer films and implications for enhancing charge transport
journal, November 2017


Origin and role of gap states in organic semiconductor studied by UPS: as the nature of organic molecular crystals
journal, September 2017


Tuning conformation, assembly, and charge transport properties of conjugated polymers by printing flow
journal, August 2019


Three-dimensional molecular and nanoparticle crystallization by DNA nanotechnology
journal, December 2017


Improved Performance of All-Polymer Solar Cells Enabled by Naphthodiperylenetetraimide-Based Polymer Acceptor
journal, May 2017


Imaging Nanoscale Morphology of Semiconducting Polymer Films with Photoemission Electron Microscopy
journal, May 2017


Single‐Junction Polymer Solar Cells with 16.35% Efficiency Enabled by a Platinum(II) Complexation Strategy
journal, May 2019


Enhanced Vertical Charge Transport of Homo‐ and Blended Semiconducting Polymers by Nanoconfinement
journal, January 2020


Printed Nonfullerene Organic Solar Cells with the Highest Efficiency of 9.5%
journal, January 2018


All-Polymer Solar Cells: Recent Progress, Challenges, and Prospects
journal, February 2019


Rhodanine flanked indacenodithiophene as non-fullerene acceptor for efficient polymer solar cells
journal, January 2017


The meniscus-guided deposition of semiconducting polymers
journal, February 2018


Rational design of conjugated side chains for high-performance all-polymer solar cells
journal, January 2018


Laser-induced orientation transformation of a conjugated polymer thin film with enhanced vertical charge transport
journal, January 2018


On the understanding of energetic disorder, charge recombination and voltage losses in all-polymer solar cells
journal, January 2018


Surpassing 10% Efficiency Benchmark for Nonfullerene Organic Solar Cells by Scalable Coating in Air from Single Nonhalogenated Solvent
text, January 2018


Revealing the Impact of F4-TCNQ as Additive on Morphology and Performance of High-Efficiency Nonfullerene Organic Solar Cells
text, January 2019


Scalable fabrication of organic solar cells based on non-fullerene acceptors
journal, January 2020


Understanding the Impact of Oligomeric Polystyrene Side Chain Arrangement on the All-Polymer Solar Cell Performance
journal, September 2017


High-resolution patterning of solution-processable materials via externally engineered pinning of capillary bridges
text, January 2018


Recent Progress in Inkjet‐Printed Thin‐Film Transistors
journal, January 2019


The meniscus-guided deposition of semiconducting polymers
journal, February 2018


High-resolution patterning of solution-processable materials via externally engineered pinning of capillary bridges
text, January 2018