Within the last five years hybrid solid-state solar cells (namely, functioning on the basis of perovskites and TiO2) have drawn very significant interest in the research and industrial communities working on creating new generation of more efficient and less expensive solar cells. Within just few years their efficiency has skyrocketed from 3% to 21%. Simple construction and cheap raw materials, compared with commercial silicon solar cells, make these devices very attractive. With continued investment into research and development it is realistic that these photovoltaic devices will be soon commercialized. Though perovskite solar cells had reached record efficiencies within the last five years, there are still several obstacles for their commercialization. One of them is cost of the materials used, although perovskite itself is inexpensive, it’s not the case with some other components. The most effective organic semiconductor currently used for hole transport, known as spiro-OMeTAD, is obtained through five-step synthesis process with the use of expensive catalysts. The aim of this project is to create one-step synthesis protocols without using expensive catalysts (Pt, Pd, Au etc.) to obtain organic semiconductors that would match or exceed hole-transporting materials currently used in solid-state hybrid solar cells (e.g. spiro-OMeTAD or other known analogues).
Project funding:
Projects funded by the Research Council of Lithuania (RCL), Projects carried out by researchers’ teams
Project results:
During this project one-step synthesis methods will be created in order to obtain organic semiconductors whose efficiency in solar cells would be equal or exceed the one of the above-mentioned spiro-OMeTAD and other analogues. These synthetic procedures would eliminate the necessity of the expensive catalysts (Pt, Pd, Au) and environmentally aggressive chemical reagents. It is also important to mention that these organic semiconductors would be attractive not only for photovoltaic application, but also for the construction of other low cost, high efficiency optoelectronic devices such as organic light–emitting diodes (OLED); phototransistors, photosensors etc. Thus, their demand is assured.
Period of project implementation: 2017-09-01 - 2020-08-31
Project coordinator: Kaunas University of Technology
Project partners: Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne
