Efficient Tandem and Triple-Junction Polymer Solar Cells

Abstract

We demonstrate tandem and triple-junction polymer solar cells with power conversion efficiencies of 8.9% and 9.6% that use a newly designed, high molecular weight, small band gap semiconducting polymer and a matching wide band gap polymer.

Influence of the alkyl substitution position on photovoltaic properties of 2D-BDT-based conjugated polymers

“…Design, synthesis and applications of novel conjugated polymers for polymer solar cells (PSCs) have received substantial attention over the past decades [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. Significant improvements have been achieved in understanding the correlations between polymer structure and photovoltaic performance, which have helped to boost the power conversion efficiency (PCE) over 7% in several well-known backbones, such as benzodithiophene (BDT) and thienothiophene (TT) (PBDT-TT) [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28], BDT and benzothiadiazole (BT) (PBDT-BT) [29,30], BDT and thienopyrroledione (TPD) (PBDT-TPD) [31], etc.…”

New Principles in Design and Technology of Multi-junction Solar Energy Converters

“…Conversion to chalcogenide films is attained by thermal ion exchange exposing the precursor metal oxide film to the chalcogen gas flux at high temperature (for the details, see [10]). We applied it to the deposition of PbTe films from a lead based compound plumbonacrite (Pb 10 (CO 3 ) 6 O(OH) 6 ) deposited at first stage by CBD under UV illumination (actually, it is Photo Chemical Bath Deposition, or PCBD). At the second stage, Te hot gas was used as the chalcogen source in CVD reactor.…”

“…This is realized in multi-layers (multi junction, or tandem) solar energy converters, see [1]- [4], that have efficiency of 30-40%, with a recent record of 44.7% [4]. It must be noted that tandem construction is a widely accepted way of design of different efficient solar energy converters, like thin film Si-based cells [5] or polymer ones [6].…”

4-Terminal Tandem Photovoltaic Cell Using Two Layers of PTB7:PC71BM for Optimal Light Absorption

“…21,22 In a few occasions it has been shown that with the use of tandem or triple junction devices one may overcome the efficiency of the optimal single junction device, 23,24 setting the PCE for organic tandem cells at above 10 %. 24 Tandem solar cells design and fabrication is, however, a demanding task due to the requirement of a suitable interconnection layer (ICL) for charge recombination.…”