Inkjet-Printed Organic Solar Cells and Perovskite Solar Cells: Progress, Challenges, and Prospect

In recent years, the power conversion efficiency of organic solar cells (OSCs) and perovskite (PVSCs) has increased to over 19% and 25%, respectively. Meanwhile, the long-term stability of OSCs and PVSCs was also significantly improved with a better understanding of the degradation mechanism and the improvement of materials, morphology, and interface stability. As both the efficiency and lifetime of solar cells are approaching the commercialization limit, fabrication methods for large-area OSCs and PVSCs that can be directly transferred from lab to fab become essential to promote the industrialization of OSCs and PVSCs. Compared with the coating methods, inkjet printing is a mature industrial technology with the advantages of random digital patterning, excellent precision and fast printing speed, which is considered to have great potential in solar cell fabrication. Many efforts have been devoted to developing inkjet-printed OSCs and PVSCs, and much progress has been achieved in the last few years. In this review, we first introduced the working principle of inkjet printing, the rheology requirements of inks, and the behaviors of the droplets. We then summarized the recent research progresses of the inkjet-printed OSCs and PVSCs to facilitate knowledge transfer between the two technologies. In the end, we gave a perspective on inkjet-printed OSCs and PVSCs.