Science

New type of solar cells

Name: Michiel Petrus (27)
Nationality: Dutch
Supervisor: prof.dr. Theo Dingemans (Aerospace Engineering)
Subject: Poly(azomethine)s as hole transport materials for plastic solar cells
Thesis Defense: in less than two years
 
“At the moment solar cells, for example the ones on roof tops, are made of silicon.

They are solid, trustworthy and used worldwide. However I believe that there is another way to make solar cells with organic, polymeric materials. This should make them cheaper and easier to produce on a large scale by using for example inktjet printing. These new solar cells can exist alongside the ones made out of silicon. The solar cells I am developing could be made flexible and therefore be used as foldable phone chargers.


I’m focusing on creating solar cells based on poly(azomethine)s. This class of polymers is interesting because they can be easily synthesized in a one-step process without catalyst and with water being the only byproduct. The solar cell I am making has two electrodes with in between a mixture of the polymer with a fullerene which is used as the electron acceptor. The polymer should absorb the sunlight and together with the electron acceptor they produce electricity.


I focus on the different characteristics of the polymers and I’m trying to understand how they will perform. Therefore I experiment with the characteristics to see what will happen to the energy levels and the absorption of the light. I prepare the solar cells at Eindhoven University of Technology, because they have the facilities to make them. I also look specifically at how the solar cells are fabricated, for example the thickness of the polymer layer, because this influences the performance of the solar cells. Because I’m working with a new material there is a lot of trial and error involved.


So far the performance of our polymer is not as good as state of the art. We have reached an efficiency of 0,12 percent. The record for polymer solar cells is ten percent with other polymers that are difficult and expensive to make. We don’t know why there is such a big difference, but we are playing with the chemistry in order to better understand the design rules. We will still use our approach and hope to eventually set the record ourselves!”

Editor Redactie

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