High-efficiency polymer solar cells by blade coating in chlorine-free solvents

作者:Tsai, Pei-Ting; Tsai, Chia-Ying; Wang, Chun-Ming; Chang, Yu-Fan; Meng, Hsin-Fei*; Chen, Zhi-Kuan; Lin, Hao-Wu; Zan, Hsiao-Wen; Horng, Sheng-Fu; Lai, Yi-Chun; Yu, Peichen
来源:Organic Electronics, 2014, 15(4): 893-903.
DOI:10.1016/j.orgel.2014.01.018

摘要

High-performance polymer cells are typically fabricated by employing toxic solvents such as dichlorobenzene and chlorobenzene. In this study, blade coating with the chlorine-free solvents toluene and xylene is applied to polymer solar cells that contained the low band-gap polymer PBDTTT-C-T blended with [6,6]-phenyl-C71-butyric acid methyl ester ([70]PCBM). The highest efficiencies of the cells fabricated in toluene and xylene solutions were 6.09% and 6.11%, respectively. Atomic force microscopy images show that the films formed by blade coating using toluene and xylene were extremely smooth, with roughness of only 1 nm. This blade coating has a rapid-drying in a few seconds without the long-running thermal or solvent annealing. The possibility of high-volume environmentally-friendly fabrication of efficient polymer solar cells with minimal material waste is thus demonstrated using a combination of chlorine-free solvents and blade coating.