scholarly journals Natural Dyes and Their Derivatives Integrated into Organic Solar Cells

Materials ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 2579 ◽  
Author(s):  
Varun Vohra

Natural photosynthetic systems contain several dyes such as carotenoids or chlorophylls which are adequately arranged to produce efficient photoinduced charge separation and electron transfer. Several research groups have attempted integrating these natural dyes and photosynthetic systems into functional organic solar cells (OSCs) producing power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) up to 0.99%. The studies presented in this short review emphasize that functionalization of natural dyes can considerably improve their PCEs. For instance, chlorophyll derivatives can yield PCEs up to 2.1%, and copolymers produced with isoindigo as an electron-deficient unit generate high PCEs up to 8%, respectively, when combined with fullerene C70 based electron acceptors in the OSC active layers. An alternative approach for natural dye integration into OSC architectures is to place these light-harvesting antennas at the interface between the active layer and the charge collection layers in these low-cost photovoltaic devices. This strategy produces large PCE increases up to 35% with respect to OSCs prepared without the interlayer. When light-harvesting systems are combined with silver nanoprisms as interlayers, additional localized surface plasmon resonance effects result in high-performance OSCs that integrate natural photosynthetic systems and demonstrate a PCE over the milestone value of 10%.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Junzhen Ren ◽  
Pengqing Bi ◽  
Jianqi Zhang ◽  
Jiao Liu ◽  
Jingwen Wang ◽  
...  

Abstract Developing photovoltaic materials with simple chemical structures and easy synthesis still remains a major challenge in the industrialization process of organic solar cells (OSCs). Herein, an ester substituted poly(thiophene vinylene) derivative, PTVT-T, was designed and synthesized in very few steps by adopting commercially available raw materials. The ester groups on the thiophene units enable PTVT-T to have a planar and stable conformation. Moreover, PTVT-T presents a wide absorption band and strong aggregation effect in solution, which are the key characteristics needed to realize high performance in non-fullerene-acceptor (NFA)-based OSCs. We then prepared OSCs by blending PTVT-T with three representative fullerene- and NF-based acceptors, PC71BM, IT-4F and BTP-eC9. It was found that PTVT-T can work well with all the acceptors, showing great potential to match new emerging NFAs. Particularly, a remarkable power conversion efficiency of 16.20% is achieved in a PTVT-T:BTP-eC9-based device, which is the highest value among the counterparts based on PTV derivatives. This work demonstrates that PTVT-T shows great potential for the future commercialization of OSCs.


Nanophotonics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 371-391 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yan-Gang Bi ◽  
Jing Feng ◽  
Jin-Hai Ji ◽  
Fang-Shun Yi ◽  
Yun-Fei Li ◽  
...  

AbstractLightweight and low-cost organic photovoltaics (OPVs) hold great promise as renewable energy sources. The most critical challenge in developing high-performance OPVs is the incomplete photon absorption due to the low diffusion length of the carrier in organic semiconductors. To date, various attempts have been carried out to improve light absorption in thin photoactive layer based on optical engineering strategies. Nanostructure-induced light harvesting in OPVs offers an attractive solution to realize high-performance OPVs, via the effects of antireflection, plasmonic scattering, surface plasmon polarization, localized surface plasmon resonance and optical cavity. In this review article, we summarize recent advances in nanostructure-induced light harvesting in OPVs and discuss various light-trapping strategies by incorporating nanostructures in OPVs and the fabrication processing of the micro-patterns with high resolution, large area, high yield and low cost.


Author(s):  
Yufu Yu ◽  
Wuxi Tao ◽  
Linqiao Wang ◽  
Yang-Dan Tao ◽  
Zeyan Peng ◽  
...  

Non-conjugated electrolytes, PMDETA-DBO and PEDETA-DBO, are developed through the quaternization of diethylenetriamine derivatives with 1,8-dibromooctane, which can interestingly be deployed as low-cost, thickness-insensitive and low-temperature processable electron transporting layers (ETLs)...


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (23) ◽  
pp. 7718-7724
Author(s):  
He Huang ◽  
Xiaojun Li ◽  
Chenkai Sun ◽  
Indunil Angunawela ◽  
Beibei Qiu ◽  
...  

High-performance OSCs were fabricated based on polymer PTQ10 as donor and HO-IDIC-2F as acceptor, using non-halogen tetrahydrofuran as processing solvent and the PCE of the as-cast OSCs reached 12.20% which is competitive with regular chloroform.


2020 ◽  
Vol 56 (92) ◽  
pp. 14337-14352
Author(s):  
Lijiao Ma ◽  
Shaoqing Zhang ◽  
Jingwen Wang ◽  
Ye Xu ◽  
Jianhui Hou

The key factors for OSC materials toward application mainly include high performance, thickness tolerance, low cost, simple fabrication processing, high stability, and an environmentally-friendly nature.


2021 ◽  
pp. 129768
Author(s):  
Dou Luo ◽  
Xue Lai ◽  
Nan Zheng ◽  
Chenghao Duan ◽  
Zhaojin Wang ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 60 (16) ◽  
pp. 8813-8817
Author(s):  
Shuting Pang ◽  
Zhiqiang Wang ◽  
Xiyue Yuan ◽  
Langheng Pan ◽  
Wanyuan Deng ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhenrong Jia ◽  
Shucheng Qin ◽  
Lei Meng ◽  
Qing Ma ◽  
Indunil Angunawela ◽  
...  

AbstractTandem organic solar cells are based on the device structure monolithically connecting two solar cells to broaden overall absorption spectrum and utilize the photon energy more efficiently. Herein, we demonstrate a simple strategy of inserting a double bond between the central core and end groups of the small molecule acceptor Y6 to extend its conjugation length and absorption range. As a result, a new narrow bandgap acceptor BTPV-4F was synthesized with an optical bandgap of 1.21 eV. The single-junction devices based on BTPV-4F as acceptor achieved a power conversion efficiency of over 13.4% with a high short-circuit current density of 28.9 mA cm−2. With adopting BTPV-4F as the rear cell acceptor material, the resulting tandem devices reached a high power conversion efficiency of over 16.4% with good photostability. The results indicate that BTPV-4F is an efficient infrared-absorbing narrow bandgap acceptor and has great potential to be applied into tandem organic solar cells.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document