Inkjet printing produces ultrathin solar cells

The new cells, which are claimed to efficiently capture energy from light, could offer an alternative way to power novel electronic devices, such as medical skin patches, where conventional energy sources are unsuitable.

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"The tremendous developments in electronic skin for robots, sensors for flying devices and biosensors to detect illness are all limited in terms of energy sources," said Eloïse Bihar, a postdoc in the team of Derya Baran, who led the research at KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia). "Rather than bulky batteries or a connection to an electrical grid, we thought of using lightweight, ultrathin organic solar cells to harvest energy from light, whether indoors or outdoors."

Until now, ultrathin organic solar cells were typically made by spin-coating or thermal evaporation, which lack scalability and limit device geometry. This technique involved using a transparent and conductive, but brittle and inflexible material (indium tin oxide (ITO)) as an electrode. To overcome these limitations, the team applied inkjet printing. "We formulated functional inks for each the layer of the solar cell architecture," said Daniel Corzo, a Ph.D. student in Baran's team.