(Invited) Development of Tailor Made Donor-Acceptor Pairs for Fullerene-Free Organic Solar Cells

Organic solar cells (OCS) are now an established clean energy technology.¹ These photovoltaic devices can be printed at low temperatures onto large area, flexible substrates, and can be made semi-transparent, making them a low-cost alternative to traditional inorganic devices, and can be utilized in many niche applications.  Current state-of-the art relies on a polymer-fullerene bulk-heterojunction active layer, with power conversion efficiencies reaching 10%.² While promising, certain limitations have prevented large scale commercialization. In an effort to advance OCS, the development of low-cost and sustainable active layer materials that can be mass-produced and yield high performance devices is essential. One area of our research at Dalhouise University centers on the development of small molecue based organic p-conjugated materials to replace the common fullerene acceptors.³ This talk will highlight our materials design strategy and discuss key thin-film characterization data and solar cell performance.

(1)          Su, Y.-W.; Lan, S.-C.; Wei, K.-H. Mater. Today 2012, 15, 554.

(2)          Li, G.; Zhu, R.; Yang, Y. Nat. Photonics 2012, 6, 153.

(3)          Eftaiha, A. F.; Hill, I. G.; Sun, J.-P.; Welch, G. C. J. Mater. Chem. A 2014, 2, 1201.