On the way to Printed & Stable Organic Photovoltaics – project POPULAR has started
We are happy to announce the new project we are participating in – POPULAR – the DFG Research Unit “Printed & Stable Organic Photovoltaics with Non-Fullerene Acceptors”. It focuses on solar cells made of novel organic semiconductors that can be manufactured using established printing processes. In order to understand and further develop this class of photovoltaic devices from a fundamental perspective, the Research Unit takes a strongly interdisciplinary approach and brings together researchers from chemistry and materials science as well as physics and mathematics to printing technology. As a part of the project at i-MEET bulk heterojunction (BHJ) composites, bilayer (BL) as well as pseudo bilayer (PBL) solar cells will be made by conventional printing techniques, by layer transfer or by orthogonal solvent processing. This approach aims to control the active layer microstructure, giving us the ability to tune the device from a pure bilayer, through to an inter-diffused bilayer device and finally to an optimised bulk heterojunction in a controlled way. Thermal degradation as well as spectrally resolved photo induced degradation will be separately studied for these reference architectures and compared to the classical bulk heterojunction concept. Degradation of partially finished solar cell stacks will allow to investigate interactions between neighbouring layers and help identify the leading degradation mechanisms.
Machine Learning Techniques will correlate the data from various characterisation techniques as absorption, transient PL and electrical measurements to provide a predictive framework for organic photovoltaic (OPV) stability investigations. Based on the knowledge gained in this project, several strategies will be employed to mitigate thermal as well as photo-chemical degradation and to fabricate highly stable lab scale devices. Two PhD positions are opened within the project