Flexible polymer solar cell modules with patterned vanadium suboxide layers deposited by an electro-spray printing method

Vanadium suboxide (VOx) layers deposited by an electro-spray (e-spray) printing method were applied to the fabrication of high efficiency patterned polymer solar cell (PSC) modules. By tailoring surface tension and the atomization condition of the e-sprayed sol precursor, e-sprayed VOx layers on top of both hydrophilic and hydrophobic surfaces were successfully obtained, which enabled alternative architectures of conventional/inverted cells in a sub-module. The integrated PSC module that alternatively incorporated patterned metal oxide layer exhibited the high aperture power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 4.93% with a geometric fill factor (GFF) of 87%. Furthermore, we achieved the high aperture PCE of 4.72% on the flexible polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate comparable to that on the glass substrate which is applicable to large area roll-to-roll PSC module production. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.