Photoactive Material for Highly Efficient and All Solution-Processed Organic Photovoltaic Modules: Study on the Efficiency, Stability, and Synthetic Complexity

A scalable and accessible photoactive formulation with a low synthetic complexity (SC) index is utilized in organic photovoltaic (OPV) fabrication. The formulation readily dissolves in nonchlorinated solvents, and the corresponding photoactive films can be processed by various coating methods to fabricate devices with power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) of 16.1% and 15.2% when using vacuum-based molybdenum oxide and solution-processable conducting polymer as the hole transporting layer in the inverted structure, respectively. This prepared device shows superior stability under light exposure. The PCE is maintained 94% of the initial values after 1080 h of light soaking at 100 mWcm(-2). Furthermore, the figure of merit based on the ratio of the SC index and PCE indicates the benefit of this formulation for OPV manufacturing, showing the feasibility of commercialization. Eventually, a PCE of 10.3% is demonstrated for a mini-module fabricated under ambient conditions, with an active area of 32.6 cm(2). To our knowledge, this PCE is one of the largest values reported to date for a green solvent and an all-solution-processed OPV module with an inverted architecture.

Automated summary

A scalable and accessible photoactive formulation with low synthetic complexity is utilized in the fabrication of organic photovoltaic (OPV) devices. The formulation demonstrates high power conversion efficiencies and superior stability under light exposure, showing potential for commercialization.