Litcius/Paper detail

Colorful and Semitransparent Organic Solar Modules via Air‐Blade Assisted Coating of Active Layers

Jing‐Yuan Fan, Zhi‐Xi Liu, Hongzheng Chen, Chang‐Zhi Li

2025Advanced Materials15 citationsDOIOpen Access PDF

Abstract

Abstract Organic solar modules (OSMs) hold potential for building‐integrated photovoltaics, yet facing challenges to fabricate uniform and large‐area active layers over non‐halogenated solvent coating. In this work, room‐temperature air‐blade assisted (RT/A) coating is presented that helps obtaining uniform active layers under ambient and non‐halogenated solvent processing. It is revealed that RT/A coating mitigates the film inhomogeneity that is commonly observed during hot‐substrate coating. Different to the thermal gradients‐induced inhomogeneous liquid‐to‐solid transition of hot‐substrate coating, RT/A strategy enables the control of transition time on film formation via directional gas flow to yield high‐quality active layer blends at ambient coating. Large‐area active layers from RT/A coating exhibit good consistency and uniformity. The resultant OSMs achieve high efficiencies with the certified PCE of 14.5% at 19.31 cm 2 area (recorded in solar cell efficiency tables, version 60). By further integrating Fabry–Pérot transparent electrodes, colorful and semitransparent modules with PCEs of 12.80% are successfully developed. Overall, this work provides a promising method on the scalable fabrication of organic photovoltaics.

Topics & Concepts

Materials scienceCoatingOrganic solar cellActive layerSubstrate (aquarium)Layer (electronics)FabricationSolar cellRoll-to-roll processingDeposition (geology)NanotechnologyOptoelectronicsComposite materialPolymerAlternative medicineBiologyGeologyThin-film transistorMedicinePaleontologyPathologyOceanographySedimentOrganic Electronics and PhotovoltaicsThin-Film Transistor TechnologiesOrganic Light-Emitting Diodes Research