An organic solar cells consisting of a combination of an organic polymer and PCBM (an organic semiconductor) developed on steel substrates can potentially convert a steel roof into an energy-producing device with greater efficiency than those currently available in the market.
The potential of third-generation solar cell technologies lies in their integration with flexible and conformal surfaces.
However, this integration requires developing new top transparent conducting electrodes as alternatives to indium tin oxide, an optoelectronic material currently in use and poses limitations because of its brittleness and as its optoelectronic efficiency varies with temperature.
The researchers at IIT Kanpur have developed organic solar cell devices consisting of a blend of organic polymer PTB7 as a donor and PCBM as an acceptor.
The devices were fabricated on opaque steel substrates with a MoO3/Au/MoO3 top electrode. The research carried out at the laboratory of Prof. Ashish Garg at IIT Kanpur demonstrated the integration of multi-layered electrodes of configuration MoO3/Au/MoO3 with the organic solar cells.
It was published in the journal ‘Energy Technology’. These electrodes offer higher optical transmission as compared to only metallic electrodes. The devices with multilayer electrodes showed a clear improvement in the photovoltaic performance by 1.5 times, as compared with those obtained with single-layer top metal electrodes of gold.
