The Fabrication and Scale-Up of Organic Photovoltaic Devices via Ultrasonic Spray Coating

At the present time, most prototype organic photovoltaic (OPV) devices are fabricated via spin-coating on to relatively small substrates. While spin-coating is a powerful tool for controllable and accurate material deposition, it is a relatively slow process and not easily scalable. In order for the technology to progress into commercial manufacturing, the fabrication of devices must be demonstrated via scalable deposition techniques.

This thesis investigates ultrasonic spray coating as a scalable technique for the fabrication of organic solar cells. Several hole transport and photoactive materials are spray-cast and characterised. OPV devices are fabricated and a partial scale up is investigated, resulting in spray-cast device metrics comparable to those fabricated via spin coating. This work details fabrication of the largest OPV devices yet reported in which the PEDOT:PSS hole transport layer and the photoactive layer are both spray coated. It is therefore suggested that that spray coating is a potentially viable roll-to-roll deposition technique.