All‐Inkjet‐Printed, All‐Air‐Processed Solar Cells

The prospective of using direct-write printing techniques for the manufacture of organic photovoltaics (OPVs) has made these techniques highly attractive. OPVs have the potential to revolutionize small-scale portable electronic applications by directly providing electric power to the systems. However, no route is available for monolithically integrating the energy-harvesting units into a system in which other components, such as transistors, sensors, or displays, are already fabricated. Here, the fabrication and the measurement of inkjet-printed, air-processed organic solar cells is reported for the first time. Highly controlled conducting and semiconducting films using engineered inks for inkjet printing enable good efficiencies for printed OPVs between ≈2 and 5% power conversion efficiency. The results show that inkjet printing is an attractive digital printing technology for cost-effective, environmentally friendly integration of photovoltaic cells onto plastic substrates.