Large-area organic photovoltaic module—Fabrication and performance

Here we describe the fabrication of the largest (233 cm2 total area) organic photovoltaic (OPV) module (polymer:fullerene) to be certified by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). OPV solar cells were fabricated at Plextronics by spin coating a blend of poly 3-hexylthiophene-2,5 diyl (P3HT) and [6,6] phenyl C61 butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) on top of our hole transport layer (HTL), Plexcore® OC. In laboratory-scale devices (0.09 cm2), this system routinely exhibits power conversion efficiencies exceeding 3.7%. This P3HT:PCBM active layer and HTL ink system was used to scale up to the larger area module (15.2 cm×15.2 cm module size, i.e. 233 cm2 total area; 108 cm2 active area), which was certified by NREL as having 1.1% total area efficiency (3.4% active area efficiency).