PV-2: Organic Photovoltaic Materials and Devices

Solar Energy Research Center for India and the United States (SERIIUS)

Thrust:

Sustainable Photovoltaics

Activity:

Earth-abundant photovoltaics and advanced processing

Objective:

To develop higher-efficiency and more-stable organic photovoltaic (OPV) devices through design and synthesis of new materials for donor/acceptor pairs.

Project Milestones:

P5: Synthesize two new absorber materials with absorption >650 nm (18 months).

P6: Demonstrate >10% single-junction, 1-cm2 device (24 months).

P7: Demonstrate >13% tandem device (54 months).

Task 1: Computational design, synthesis, and characterization of donor-acceptor pairs

  • Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
  • National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
  • Solarmer Energy, Inc.
  • Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS)

OPV, while rapidly advancing in efficiency and lifetime, can still be substantially improved through the development of new donor-acceptor materials and pairs. Because of the huge prospective set of materials, we will start with molecules/polymers with identified potential from the partners and then use computational tools to propose a next generation of materials. These will be synthesized by our team and evaluated for initial opto-electronic properties. If suitable, these will be evaluated using initial device structures. We will also look at the potential of hybridizing the devices by combining inorganic nanostructures with the more conventional bulk-heterojunction approach.

Task 2: Scale-up and reliability

  • National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
  • Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
  • Solarmer Energy, Inc.

The focus is to develop device structures compatible with large-area, high-throughput processing while enhancing the device reliability. Key for the new materials developed in Task 1 is to evaluate their inherent stability both “as produced” and integrated into a device. This task will use combinatorial reliability screening as a direct probe of stability of various materials and device configurations. Improved large-area device development and improved device structures are used to optimize performance and lifetime. This includes the integration of the new materials into high-performance tandem solar-cell structures.