Thin Film Structure of Organic Photovoltaics

Program Description

Solar Energy is a promising new alternative energy source. Unfortunately, the high cost of commercially available silicon based solar cells is not economically practical for many applications. In recent years, there have been significant advances in utilizing conjugated polymers blended with fullerene derivatives or small molecules to create organic photovoltaic devices with power conversion efficiencies greater than 8%. Organic photovoltaic devices are attractive because they use less expensive semiconductor materials and the manufacturing process is less expensive. The power conversion efficiency of these devices is heavily dependent on the structural morphology of the bulk heterojunction, the nanoscale blending of the electron donor and acceptor.