110 likes | 551 Views
Organic Solar Cells: The Technology and the Future. Diana Snelling 11-19-07 ChE 384. Performance Comparison. Lawrence Kazmerski, Don Gwinner, Al Hicks, 11/7/07, United States Department of Energy. Best Research-Cell Efficiencies. Traditional Cells vs. Organic. 100nm. 100 nm. 100 nm.
E N D
Organic Solar Cells:The Technology and the Future Diana Snelling 11-19-07 ChE 384
Performance Comparison Lawrence Kazmerski, Don Gwinner, Al Hicks, 11/7/07, United States Department of Energy. Best Research-Cell Efficiencies.
Traditional Cells vs. Organic 100nm 100 nm 100 nm Bulk Heterojunction Benanti, Travis L, and D Venkataraman. "Organic solar cells: An overview focusing on active layer morphology." Photosynthesis Research 87 (Apr. 2005): 73-81.
Organic Semiconductors • Chemistry of polymers is well understood • Chemically tunable • Band gap • Valence and conduction energies • Charge transport • Solubility • Structural properties • The variety of organic materials that can be synthesized greatly overwhelms the variety of inorganic materials possible
Organic Materials for PV • Intrinsic property: donor or acceptor • Extrinisic property: p or n doped by impurities • Kinetic property: efficient electron or hole transport determined by orbital overlap a – c are good donors d & f are good acceptors
Organic Cell Structure J.-M. Nunzi. “Organic photovoltaic materials and devices.” C. R. Physique 3 (2002): 523-542.
Inexpensive Lightweight Disposable Flexible Environmental Niche applications Efficiency Degradation Competition with existing Si industry Power farms Advantages and Challenges
Conclusions • Great research opportunity • POTENTIAL • Applications • Cost • Organic solar cells are probably not a solution for our large-scale future energy problems