Stitchable organic photovoltaic cells with textile electrodes

Abstract

Organic photovoltaic cells (OPV) have been extensively studied and got great attention for a next-generation flexible power source due to their unique properties such as flexibility, lightweight, easy processability, cost-effectiveness, and being environmental friendly. Film-based OPVs however have a limitation for the applications in wearable products since they are not compatible with textile-based wearable products. In this study, we introduce a textile-based OPV as a stitchable power source. A large-area textile electrode can provide effective optical and mechanical characteristics for trapping incident light and high-durability. In order to define the power conversion efficiency (PCE) in the textile-based OPV, we suggest the theoretical approach to determine the contact area on a textile electrode by using Hertzian theory. It is demonstrated that our textile-based OPV can provide the enhanced short circuit current density, J(sc), of 13.11 mA cm(-2) under 1 Sun condition, resulting in the PCE of about 1.8%. We expect that our textile-based OPV and theoretical approach might open the promising way to realize a compatible power source for wearable electronics. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.