Polymer solar panels (PSCs) are considered as one of the most encouraging low-cost alternatives for alternative energy production with devices now reaching power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) above the milestone value of 10%. deposition of multilayered active layers can be an efficient approach to remarkably increase the fill element and PCE of PSCs. In fact, applying this demanding approach to fabricate inverted architecture PSCs has the potential to generate low-cost, high effectiveness and stable products, which may revolutionize worldwide energy demand and/or help develop next generation products such as semi-transparent photovoltaic windows. strong class=”kwd-title” Keywords: organic solar cells, conjugated polymer, bulk heterojunction, P3HT, PCBM, PCDTBT, PTB7 1. Intro Since the pioneering work of Tang in 1986 [1], organic solar cells have been steadily improving their performances. In fact, both solution-processed small molecules and polymer solar cells (PSCs) now reach power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) over the milestone GW3965 HCl value of 10% [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]. Although these performances do not allow them to tackle the state-of-the-art silicon technologies yet, due to their low fabrication cost, lightweight and potential to be integrated into a variety of next-generation technologies such as wearable electronics or semi-transparent photovoltaic windows, PSCs have attracted great interest from the materials science community over the past decade [10,11,12,13,14]. The introduction and development of active layers composed of poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) and fullerene derivatives in the early 2000s is one of the first GW3965 HCl major achievements in the field as they led to a large increase in PCE over 6% [15,16]. Even a decade later, P3HT-based active layers were still considered as benchmark materials for the study and improvement of PSC performances [17]. However, P3HT-based active layers have now reached their limit and researchers have been focusing on developing new materials that allow for better light-harvesting and/or higher charge transport properties [18,19]. MGC5370 While developing new materials seems to be an efficient strategy to tune the photovoltaic parameters of PSCs, a large number of studies emphasize that a particular attention should be given to the active layer morphologies in order to fabricate high PCE devices [13,20]. For instance, the formation of electron donor (ED)- and acceptor (EA)-rich phase separated domains can be either extremely positive or negative depending on the size of the domains and their relative position with respect to the electrodes. This can be easily understood when taking into account the working principle of PSCs (Figure 1). Open in another window Shape 1 Working rule of charge parting in the electron donor-electron acceptor user interface and charge transportation towards the particular electrodes depicted using stage separated or focus graded energetic levels. Once photons are consumed in the energetic coating, the excitons with limited diffusion measures for the nanometer size reach an EDCEA user interface to endure charge separation resulting in the forming of electrons and openings. Consequently, effective exciton to photogenerated costs dissociation only happens in the current presence of a big EDCEA user interface. However, once costs are generated, openings and electron will percolate towards the cathode as well as the anode, respectively. This is efficiently accomplished in energetic levels possessing the sufficient vertical EDCEA distribution leading to products with huge GW3965 HCl short-circuit current densities (Jsc) and fill up elements (FF). The open-circuit voltage (Voc) also advantages from a satisfactory vertical focus gradient as Voc raises with decreasing invert saturation current (J0) [21]. Remember that these results ought to be seen in PSCs with both regular (best cathode/bottom clear anode) and inverted (best anode/bottom clear cathode) gadget architectures. However and individually of the achieved PCEs, inverted PSCs (iPSCs) should lead to higher device durability as, unlike regular PSCs (rPSCs), their top gold or silver electrodes are not easily oxidized [22]. Both theoretical and experimental results have demonstrated that EDCEA vertical concentration gradients will play a major role in the production of high efficiency devices, especially when a layered structure is obtained composed of an ED-rich layer on the anode side, an EA-rich layer on the cathode side and an intermixed layer sandwiched between the two first layers [23,24]. However, it isn’t simple to fabricate such energetic levels constantly, in inverted gadget architectures especially. Right here, we will review the fabrication procedures to create such vertical focus gradients in both solitary coating and sequentially transferred multilayer energetic layers. Specifically, we will show that in solitary energetic levels, the interactions from the.