organic PV

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory have found a mechanism for creating a charge in molecular materials. The findings, say the team, could lead to new approaches in the design of PV devices.

Despite the difficulties its solar manufacturing industry faces, the Taiwanese government is ramping up its R&D efforts to measure the efficiency of what it calls “new-generation light-driven photovoltaics”.

A team of scientists at Germany’s Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen Nürnberg has set an efficiency record of 12.25% for a non-fullerene based organic solar cell.

A Japanese research team claims to have tailored an electron-accepting unit, which has been successfully used in an organic semiconductor applied in a solar cell device that showed high PV performance.

A research team from South Korea’s Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology has demonstrated a new process for the creation of organic solar cells. Using this method, the team has created cells with a conversion efficiency up to 12.01%.

Cheap-to-produce OPV are the focus of research and although the struggle to get beyond 13% efficiency has hindered commercialization, organic PV can be made translucent, making it potentially ideal for applications such as PV-generating windows.

The researchers found that printed solar cells achieved a better performance when they used an active polymer material as glue.

The research shows that films used in organic cells, which are produced more slowly with additives, generally perform better than the more rapidly formed films.

Halogens have proved to be very successful in accelerating the electron transfer between the electrolyte and the semiconductor.

A spanish research team from Ikerbasque has created a fullerene-based cell that is also capable of turning direct current into alternating current.