Slot-die Fabrication of Solution-processed Kesterite Solar Cells for Product Integrated Photovoltaics

Traditional photovoltaics (PV) has made excellent progress over the last decade with decreasing installation costs and a levelised cost of electricity that is competitve with fossil fuel based sources of electricity. This has been achieved using economies of scale manufacturing at a relatively small number of mega-factories that are mostly based in a single geographical region. One consequence of this approach to PV manufacturing is that PV modules are highly standardised and the ubiquitous and low-cost deployment of PV on any surface is still not a commercial reality. There is therefore clear scope to perform the manufacturing research that enables this goal. In this work, slot-die deposition of an inorganic nanoparticle ink is used to create proof-of-concept photovoltaic devices in any geometry and pattern using a low-cost masking technique. The results are discussed in the context of a new design-led approach to photovoltaics manufacturing that has the potential to provide complementary new global electricity capacity for distributed applications in the built-environment.