Organic photovoltaic cells (OPVs) have been a hot topic for research during the last decade due to their promising application in relieving energy pressure and environmental problems caused by the increasing combustion of fossil fuels. Much effort has been made toward understanding the photovoltaic mechanism, including evolving chemical structural motifs and designing device structures, leading to a remarkable enhancement of the power conversion efficiency of OPVs from 3% to over 15%. In this brief review, the advanced progress and the state-of-the-art performance of OPVs in very recent years are summarized. Based on several of the latest developed approaches to accurately detect the separation of electron-hole pairs in the femtosecond regime, the theoretical interpretation to exploit the comprehensive mechanistic picture of energy harvesting and charge carrier generation are discussed, especially for OPVs with bulk and multiple heterojunctions. Subsequently, the novel structural designs of the device architecture of OPVs embracing external geometry modification and intrinsic structure decoration are presented. Additionally, some approaches to further increase the efficiency of OPVs are described, including thermotics and dynamics modification methods. Finally, this review highlights the challenges and prospects with the aim of providing a better understanding towards highly efficient OPVs.

Nanoscale patterns with high conductivity based on silver nanoparticle inks were fabricated using spray coating method. Through optimizing the solution content and spray operation, accurate nanoscale patterns consisting of silver nanoparticles with a square resistance lower than 1 Ω /cm² were obtained. By incorporating in situ sintering to substitute the general post sintering process, the time consumption could be significantly reduced to one sixth, qualifying it for large-scale and cost-effective fabrication of printed electronics. To testify the application of spray-coated silver nanoparticle inks, an inverted polymer solar cell was also fabricated, which exhibited a power conversion efficiency of 2.76%.