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Large-area, flexible polymer solar cell based on silver nanowires as transparent electrode by roll-to-roll printing

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Abstract

Conventional organic solar cell’s (OSC) architectures, including rigid transparent substrate (Glass), conductive electrode (Indium tin oxide, ITO) and small working areas, are widely utilized in organic photovoltaic fields. However, such a structure as well as conventional spin-coating method obviously restrict their industrial application. In this article, we report the deposition of silver nanowires (AgNWs) on the flexible substrate by slot-die printing. The obtained AgNWs films exhibited a high transmittance and a low resistance, and were further used as the transparent conductive electrode of OSCs. A typical conjugated polymer, poly[(2,5-bis(2-hexyldecyloxy)phenylene)-alt-(5,6-difluoro-4,7-di(thiophen-2-yl)benzo[c] [1,2,5]thiadiazole)] (PPDT2FBT), was used as the active material to fabricate large-area (7 cm2 solar cells by a slot-die coating process. The power conversion efficiency (PCE) could reach 1.87% initially and further increased to 3.04% by thermal annealing. Compared to the performance of reference cell on ITO substrate, the result indicated that the AgNWs could be developed as an alternative substitute of conductive electrode to fabricate the large-area flexible OSCs by roll-to-roll printing.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chinese Academy of Sciences Key Laboratory of Nanosystem and Hierarchical Fabrication, Chinese Academy of Sciences Center for Excellence in Nanoscience, National Center for Nanoscience and Technology, Beijing, 100190, China

    Yi-fan Zhao, Wen-jun Zou, Huan Li, Kun Lu  (吕琨) & Zhi-xiang Wei  (魏志祥)

  2. Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710049, China

    Yi-fan Zhao & Wei Yan  (延卫)

Authors
  1. Yi-fan Zhao
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  2. Wen-jun Zou
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  3. Huan Li
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  4. Kun Lu  (吕琨)
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  5. Wei Yan  (延卫)
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  6. Zhi-xiang Wei  (魏志祥)
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Kun Lu  (吕琨), Wei Yan  (延卫) or Zhi-xiang Wei  (魏志祥).

Additional information

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 21125420 and 21474022) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Invited paper for special issue of “Opto-electronic Functional Polymer”

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Zhao, Yf., Zou, Wj., Li, H. et al. Large-area, flexible polymer solar cell based on silver nanowires as transparent electrode by roll-to-roll printing. Chin J Polym Sci 35, 261–268 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10118-017-1875-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10118-017-1875-z

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