Novaled Charge Transport Materials for Organic Photovoltaics

OPV provides attractive features such as the use of high-throughput manufacturing, low-temperature processing, aesthetic color tuning, superior angular and low-light-intensity performance. However, the two major hurdles – module costs and efficiency – are constantly being improved but are not yet competitive with available inorganic technologies. Therefore it is crucial for manufacturers to understand the impact of raw material properties, their costs and implementation in roll-to-roll production.

Based on its expertise in transport materials for OLEDs, Novaled developed OPV materials that provide and enable specific benefits:

  • PIN Tandem solar cells for high short-circuit voltage and record efficiency
  • Thickness optimization for light harvesting of the complete sun spectrum
  • Inverted and standard cell configurations
  • Simplified layer stack designs
  • High stability and long lifetime
  • Easier manufacturing

The Novaled portfolio comprises charge transport and dopant materials:

  • Hole transporters combined with p-dopants
  • Air-stable n-dopants for easy handling in production

Using Novaled materials allows for high cell performance with proven stability:

  • Long extrapolated lifetimes under light exposure
  • Certified record power conversion efficiencies; market leader Heliatek already reached 13,2%
  • High open-circuit voltage (1.9V) for deep HOMO absorbers
  • High fill-factor (~60%)

Novaled’s doping technology offers many benefits that satisfy requests of OPV manufacturers:

  • Covers rough electrodes to increase device yield
  • Enables efficient charge transport and extraction
  • Eases optical tuning for overall sunlight harvesting

Novaled’s doping technology is advantageous for various cell architectures:

  • Inverted and standard cell configurations
  • Small molecule tandem stacks with pn-junctions
  • Hybrid approaches in combination with polymeric absorbers
  • HTL for solid-state dye-sensitized solar cells

Example: organic solar cell scheme with Novaled materials

Selected commercial materials
for OPV applications:

  • NHT-49
  • NDP-9
  • NDN-45