1. Organic Solar Cells: The Technology and the Future
Diana Snelling
ChE 384

2. Performance Comparison
Lawrence Kazmerski, Don Gwinner, Al Hicks, 11/7/07, United States Department of Energy. Best Research-Cell Efficiencies.

3. 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):

4. 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

5. 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

6. Organic Cell Structure
J.-M. Nunzi. “Organic photovoltaic materials and devices.” C. R. Physique 3 (2002):

7. Advantages and Challenges
Inexpensive
Lightweight
Disposable
Flexible
Environmental
Niche applications
Efficiency
Degradation
Competition with existing Si industry
Power farms

8. Conclusions Great research opportunity POTENTIAL
Applications
Cost
Organic solar cells are probably not a solution for our large-scale future energy problems