New Understanding Could Result in More Efficient Organic Solar Cells

The goal of making cheap organic solar cells may have gotten a little more approachable with a new understanding of the basic science of charge separation presented in a paper published online today, February 3, in Nature Communications. 

Co-authored by Penn State electrical engineer Noel Giebink with lead author Bethany Bernardo, an undergraduate in his group, and colleagues at IMEC in Belgium, Argonne National Lab, Northwestern, and Princeton, the paper suggests design rules for making more efficient solar cells in the future.

Organic solar cells currently have a top efficiency of approximately 10 percent in the laboratory, much less than inorganic single crystal silicon. 

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An electron wave function, indicated by orange shading, spreads across several nanocrystalline fullerene molecules in this representation of an organic solar cell heterojunction. Image Credit: Giebink, Penn State