[font face=Serif][font size=5]New Fabrication Technique Leads to Broader Sunlight Absorption in Plastic Solar Cells[/font]

For Immediate Release
November 29, 2016
Tracey Peake | 919-515-6142

[font size=3]Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new strategy for fabricating more efficient plastic solar cells. The work has implications for developing solar cells with a wider absorption range and increased efficiency.

As plastic solar cells now rival silicon-based solar cells in power conversion efficiency, researchers want to increase the range of photonic energies that plastic solar cells absorb. Ternary solar cells, in which three materials are mixed together as a light-harvesting layer, offer a potential solution. However, while ternary solar cells have been manufactured for years, most of the devices have not been able to meet desired levels of performance ­– mainly due to unfavorable mixing.

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“Using thermodynamic techniques, we were able to find that this particular mixture was undergoing ‘alloying,’ in which the donor polymers tend to group up together and push the fullerene away,” Ghasemi says. “This explains why so many conventionally produced ternary cells may have low efficiency.”

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“The SeCaT solar cells prevent the polymers from mixing due to their layered structure,” Ghasemi says. “This novel design allows fabrication of plastic solar cells with wider optical sensitivity using cheap and scalable processing steps and with reduced materials selection constraints. Hopefully this new method can be particularly useful for greenhouse applications toward zero energy farming, as the materials used to demonstrate our method have optical properties compatible to these applications.”

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