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Life cycle assessment of ITO-free flexible polymer solar cells prepared by roll-to-roll coating and printing

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dc.contributor.authorEspinosa, Nieves
dc.contributor.authorGarcĂ­a-Valverde, Rafael
dc.contributor.authorUrbina, Antonio
dc.contributor.authorLenzmann, Frank
dc.contributor.authorManceau, Matthieu
dc.contributor.authorAngmo, Dechan
dc.contributor.authorKrebs, Frederik C
dc.contributor.departmentFĂ­sica
dc.date.accessioned2024-02-08T12:10:08Z
dc.date.available2024-02-08T12:10:08Z
dc.descriptionAcceso restringido
dc.description.abstractIndium is a scarce and expensive material that has been identified as a bottleneck for future organic electronics deployment in large scale. Indium is the main constituent of Indium Tin Oxide (ITO), which is the most successful transparent electrode in organic photovoltaics (OPV) so far. A new process, termed Hiflex, allows for manufacture of flexible OPV modules where the ITO electrode has been replaced by a sputtered Al/Cr electrode in an inverted device architecture with front illumination. This work presents a life cycle assessment of the Hiflex process, in order to compare the environmental impact of avoiding ITO as electrode. The new ITO-free process reduces some of the processing steps, leading to important reductions of the energy input during OPV module manufacturing in comparison to ITO-based modules. The environmental analysis reveals an Energy Pay-Back time (EPBT) of 10 years due to the high-energy consumption of Al/Cr roll-to-roll sputtering and to the relatively low efficiency of the Hiflex OPV modules (E1%). An optimization of the active area fraction could easily reduce the EPBT to E5 years. A further enhancement of the efficiency to 5% would give rise to a promising EPBT of only 1 year. Our work highlights that vacuum processing steps should be avoided.en
dc.formatapplication/pdfes
dc.format.extent11
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.1016/j.solmat.2011.09.048
dc.identifier.issnPrint: 0927-0248
dc.identifier.issnElectronic: 1879-3398
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10201/139000
dc.languageenges
dc.publisherElsevier
dc.relationBesides, this work was funded by, and contributed to, the European Commission as part of the Framework 7 ICT 2009 collaborative project HIFLEX (Grant agreement no. 248678); by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (Consolider-HOPE CSD2007-00007), and by Comunidad Autonoma de la Region de Murcia (CARM-D429-2008).es
dc.rights.accessRightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/restrictedAccess
dc.subjectLife cycle assessmenten
dc.subjectPolymer solar cellsen
dc.subjectITO-freeen
dc.subjectAluminum/chromium cathodeen
dc.subjectRoll-to-roll coatingen
dc.subjectFlexible substratesen
dc.titleLife cycle assessment of ITO-free flexible polymer solar cells prepared by roll-to-roll coating and printinges
dc.typeinfo:eu-repo/semantics/articlees
dspace.entity.typePublicationes
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