Project R-14255

Single-component organic solar cells: improved control over the polymer sequence toward enhanced device efficiency and lifetime (Research)

Moving global energy consumption away from fossil fuels requires innovative renewable energy solutions. Photovoltaics (PV) can fulfill this need many times over if deployed over a large enough area. Despite being a promising thin-film PV technology – with particular advantages in terms of weight, aesthetics, and cost – organic photovoltaics have not witnessed a commercial breakthrough yet. Although the efficiency gap with inorganic thin-film PV has largely been closed, stability and reproducibility issues have not been fully resolved. Whereas the state-of-the-art organic solar cells employ physical mixtures of electron donor and acceptor components in bulk heterojunction active layers, recent initiatives put forward single-component organic solar cells wherein the donor and acceptor are chemically bonded in one material, thereby improving device stability and affording better industrial figures of merit. Nevertheless, the structures of the required all-conjugated donor-acceptor block copolymers are still poorly defined and the synthetic methods should be optimized to take full benefit of this novel approach. In the presented project, this challenge is addressed, strongly leaning on the synthetic and device expertise of the host research groups and using continuous flow chemistry to enhance control over the final polymer structures. The goal is to move beyond merely academic insights toward industrially relevant findings with a clear economic and societal added value.

01 November 2023 - 31 October 2027