In situ reflectance imaging of organic thin film formation from solution

• The rapid progress of organic photovoltaic devices during the last decade, with power conversion efficiencies now exceeding 8%, has brought the technology close to an industrial breakthrough. For polymer solar cells, roll to roll printing is desired to gain the production advantage. The formation of the photoactive material from solutions needs to be controlled and optimized. Therefore a suitable method to monitor the deposition process is needed as deviations of drying times1 and drying rates2 during the coating process have proven to generate morphology variations causing variations in photocurrent generation.Here we demonstrate how reflectance imaging can be used to monitor the drying process, both for spin coating and blade coating deposition. A blue LED is used as light source to generate specular reflections imaged by a CMOS camera. The thinning of the wet film can then be observed by thin film interference, and can be recorded for each pixel. This enables an estimation of the evaporation rate for each pixel mapped over the substrate. For spin coating the evaporation rate is shown to increase with the distance from the rotation center, whereas the air flow is the determining parameter during blade coating. By mapping the times when interference ceases, lateral variations in drying time are visualized. Furthermore the quenching of polymer photoluminescence during the drying process can be visualized, thus creating a possibility to estimate morphological variations. Moreover lateral thickness variations of the dry film can be visualized by scanning ellipsometry. After depositing a top electrode photocurrent images can be generated by a laser scanning method. This allows for a direct comparison of drying conditions and photocurrent generation.  The possibility to monitor the thin film formation as well as lateral variations in thickness in-situ by a non-invasive method, is an important step for future large scale applications where stable high performing generating morphologies have to be formed over large areas.1Schmidt-Hansberg, B.; Sanyal, M.; Klein, M.F.G.; Pfaff, M.; Schnabel, N.; Jaiser, S.; Vorobiev, A.; Müller, E.; Colsmann, A.; Scharfer, P.; Gerthsen, D.; Lemmer, U.; Barrena, E.; and Schabel, W., ACS Nano 5 , 2011, 8579-85902 Hou, L.; Wang, E.; Bergqvist, J.; Andersson, V.B.; Wang, Z.; Müller, C.; Campoy-Quiles, M.; Andersson, M.R.; Zhang, F.; Inganäs, O.,Adv. Func. Mat. 21 , 2011, 3169–3175

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TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Naturresursteknik -- Energisystem (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Environmental Engineering -- Energy Systems (hsv//eng)

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