Fast air printing of functional oxide films: spatial atomic layer deposition, a new technique with a high potential in the field of low cost photovoltaics.

Metal–organic framework (MOF) thin films represent a milestone in the development of future technological breakthroughs. The processability of MOFs as films on surfaces together with their major features (i.e. tunable porosity, large internal surface area, and high crystallinity) is broadening their range of applications to areas such as gas sensing, microelectronics, photovoltaics, and membrane-based separation technologies. Despite the recent attention that MOF thin films have received, many challenges still need to be addressed for their manufacturing and integrability, especially when an industrial scale-up perspective is envisioned. In this brief review, we introduce several appealing approaches that have been developed in the last few years. First, a summary of liquid phase strategies that comprise microfluidic methods and supersaturation-driven crystallization processes is described. Then, gas phase approaches based on atomic layer deposition (ALD) are also presented.

Materials properties are the keystone of functional devices for energy including energy conversion, harvesting or storage. But to market new energy materials, the development of suitable processing methods allowing affordable prices is needed. Recently, a new approach to atomic layer deposition (ALD) has gained much momentum. This alternative approach is based on separating the precursors in space rather than in time, and has therefore been called Spatial ALD (SALD). With SALD, the purge steps typical of ALD are not needed and thus deposition rates a hundred times faster are achievable. Additionally, SALD can be easily performed at ambient atmosphere, thus it is easier and cheaper to scale up than conventional ALD. This opens the door to widespread industrial application of ALD for the deposition of energy materials for applications including solar energy, energy storage, or smart windows. SALD is presented here and examples of application to photovoltaics and transparent conductive materials are given. We show that SALD is capable of producing high-quality films fully suited for device integration.