Nanostructured Materials for High Efficiency Low Cost Solution-Processed Photovoltaics
- Stanford Univ., CA (United States)
The goal of the project was to develop a suite of materials coupled with processing technologies aimed at the fabrication of entirely solution-processed photovoltaic devices. Most of the emphasis in terms of innovation was placed on the transparent electrodes, widely considered a critical component of the solar cell in terms of cost and performance. The active layer technologies proposed hinged on the fabrication and deposition of semiconducting nanoparticles. The electrode development hit all the milestones proposed: by the end of the grant we were able to fabricate transparent and flexible electrodes with transmission over the solar spectrum higher than 85% and sheet resistance lower than 10 Ω/square. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest-performance transparent electrode reported. Furthermore these electrodes were deposited by spray-coating, a large-area, low-cost deposition techniques. Hence the first main goal of the proposal, which was to find an alternative to ITO was successfully achieved. Organic photovoltaic devices were made with these electrodes having a performance indistinguishable from that of devices made on ITO (the industry standard), e.g. ~5% for P3HT:PCBM cells. We also innovated in the active-area part of the device where semiconducting inks were designed rather than nanoparticle suspensions. The process we selected, called air-stable ink rolling (AIR) allowed to deposit well-controlled films of ternary and quaternary II-VI semiconductors. Developing a new technology from scratch proved to be more challenging than anticipated and therefore we were not able to demonstrate a fully integrated device using our nanostructured high-performance transparent electrodes as well as AIR active layers. As a result, we did not achieve the second main goal of the proposal, which was to fabricate an entire cell using nanostructured materials. We were able to develop the components separately but did not integrate them in a device.
- Research Organization:
- Stanford Univ., CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)
- DOE Contract Number:
- FG36-08GO18005
- OSTI ID:
- 1353219
- Report Number(s):
- Final Technical Report-Salleo-DOE-40161; NA
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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