How To Employ Organic Photovoltaic Solar Cells For Energy Conversion

Unleashing the potential of Organic Photovoltaic Solar Cells for energy conversion can revolutionize our approach to sustainable power. Discover the intricacies of this technology, its benefits, and how to effectively employ it for a greener future.

Organic solar cells

An organic solar cell is a type of photovoltaic that uses organic electronics-a branch of organic electronics that deals with conductive organic polymers or small organic molecules for light absorption and charge transport to produce electricity from sunlight

They are cheap, resulting in low production costs to form large volumes.
Compared to conventional silicon solar cells, organic solar cells are lighter in weight, easily disposable, convenient to fabricate, potentially transparent, flexible and come with a lower manufacturing cost

Conclusion

Bulk heterojunction organic cells represent a promising technology that could be an important player in the future photovoltaics market

Substantial research and development efforts are required to bring the technology to better performance levels
The flexibility offered by organic chemistry to design semiconductors and engineer interfaces to other inorganic or organic materials would offer various opportunities to explore third-generation concepts

Organic photovoltaic structure

A common characteristic of small molecules (fullerene) and polymers (P3HT) is that both have a large conjugated system.

In organic semiconductor physics, **** takes the role of the valence band, while LUMO serves as the conduction band. Energy separation between them is considered as the band gap of organic electronic materials, and is typically in the range of leV to 2.3eV.

Commercialization

Many multinational companies are interested in this newly emerging solar technology

Bulk heterojunction solar cell

This type of cell has an absorption layer consisting of a nano-scale blend of donor and acceptor materials.

After the capture of a photon, electrons move to acceptor domains and are then carried through the device and collected by one electrode. Holes move in the opposite direction and are collected on the other side.

Advantages

Low weight and flexibility of photovoltaic modules

Semi-transparency
Easy integration into other products
Significantly lower manufacturing costs compared to conventional inorganic technologies
Short energy payback times and low environmental impact during manufacturing and operations

Power conversion efficiency (η)

To be considered commercially-viable, photovoltaic solar cells must be able to achieve at least ten to fifteen per cent efficiency, which is already much lower than that of inorganic PV.