Organic Solar Cells with Superior Upscalability: Materials and Devices
Abstract
The bulk heterojunction (BHJ) organic photovoltaic (OPV) structure has been the prevailing composition of the active layer of OSCs for over 30 years, where a donor polymer (or small molecule) is blended with an acceptor (fullerenes or non-fullerene acceptors (NFAs)) with the assist of the processing solvent. Though significant progress has been made in both efficiency (approaching 20%) and stability, the upscaling of them faces multifaced challenges, among which morphology controlling is notoriously difficult at scale. Here a team of chemists and device engineers propose to develop organic solar cells with a much simpler structure that are much straightforward to upscaled. The organic light absorber contains a single organic acceptor with or without a very small amount of donor which does not have a peculation network so that it is much less sensitive to the material mixing morphology. The research will focus on the understanding of its working mechanism, particularly on charge generation, recombination and extraction process, which will provide feedback to the material synthesis of new molecules. The project will verify several hypotheses with a new characterization method of defects in organic semiconductors. A series of new organic acceptors with free charge generation upon photoexcitation and bipolar carrier transport will be synthesized. This success of this project will dramatically accelerate the upscaling of OPV for Navy#s applications.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Jan 24, 2024
- Source ID
- N000142412107
Entities
People
- Jinsong Huang
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill