Printed electronics prototyping of flexible optoelectronic methylammonium trihalide perovskite-based devices

Abstract

The field of printable electronics has become very extensive in recent years, with applications ranging from high volume photovoltaic device fabrication to organic field-effect transistors and organic light-emitting diodes. Existing printed electronics technologies, such as inkjet printing, gravure printing, and aerosol jet printing have been used in conventional printing for decades. It is recent advances in functional materials and ink formulations which have allowed these technologies to be used for electronic device fabrication. One of the main advantages of printable electronics when compared to conventional device fabrication techniques is the relatively low cost and high throughput for large surface deposition. One of the main application markets for low-cost flexible devices is for the internet of things, in which there is a growing need for these devices, for communication and data acquisition purposes at a massive scale. Moreover, there is a real need to switch from current non-renewable energy sources to more renewable and ecological sources of energy such as solar, wind and nuclear energy. The massive production of flexible low-cost photovoltaic devices could be a partial answer to this need, as fabrication on flexible substrates not only lowers device weight and transport costs but also increases the ease of solar cell installation. One material of current interest for photovoltaic applications are perovskites, which can be solution processed, offer a range of adapted properties depending on their composition and have been shown to be especially efficient in harvesting solar energy. These materials are typically made in lab for research and development purposes, however, some formulations can now be found commercially. The commercial development of these materials is one of the driving forces for the work performed in this thesis. In this work, a study of the feasibility of fabricating active devices with these commercial perovskite formulations, using printed electronic methods, is proposed. More specifically, inkjet printing is used to print flexible active optoelectronic devices using commercially available perovskite formulations. Multiple device architectures are studied for their fabrication feasibility using inkjet printing methods. Once the best suited architectures for device printing are identified, arrays of devices are printed to evaluate the feasibility of large-scale device fabrication. Two types of perovskitebased devices are fabricated; bolometers for smart building applications and flexible photovoltaic devices. The flexible bolometers offer great temperature sensing capabilities, with a TCR of up to 100 %/°C, within a limited temperature sensing range of 17 °C to 36 °C, these also show light switching behavior. The photovoltaic devices performances are rather limited, with an obtained maximum power conversion efficiency of 0.11 %, however this study proved their fabrication feasibility and offers optimization pathways to further enhance performances. Working photovoltaic device yields of up to 80 % are found, further demonstrating that printed electronic fabrication methods may be used for large scale flexible device fabrication.

Date	11 Jan 2021
Original language	American English
Awarding Institution	École de technologie supérieure
Supervisor	Sylvain G. Cloutier (Supervisor) & Martin Bolduc (Co-supervisor)