Transparent conductive film with printable embedded patterns for organic solar cells

We report a development of a highly transparent conductive film (TCF) which is the first embedded metal grid of fine lines on a flexible substrate. The TCF reveals excellent electrical and optical performance as transparent conductive film with an extremely high σDC/σOP value of 237 due to 80.35% transmittance and 6.85 Ω/□ sheet resistance. Furthermore, the extremely high performance is realized with new features of the TCFs: roll-to-roll printability on flexible substrates, thermal imprinting of channels at 10 μm widths, water-based nano-silver paste to fill the narrow channels, and doctor blade as a facile method to fill the paste into the channels. The TCF electrode is implemented to fabrication of an organic solar cell (OSC) which shows a power conversion efficiency of 1.40%. This is non-optimized yet but approaching that of an ITO-based OSC (1.70%). Thus, we demonstrate a printable TCF to replace the ITO films toward low-cost large area roll-to-roll fabrication of organic solar cells.

► Fabricated transparent conductive film with printable embedded patterns. ► Definition of 10 μm channels on polymer film for roll-to-roll machine. ► Development of water-based ink for doctor-blade filling of the channels. ► Fabrication of organic solar cell using the fabricated electrode film.