Recyclable organic solar cells on cellulose nanocrystal substrates

Abstract

Solar energy is potentially the largest source of renewable energy at our disposal, but significant advances are required to make photovoltaic technologies economically viable and, from a life-cycle perspective, environmentally friendly, and consequently scalable. Cellulose nanomaterials are emerging high-value nanoparticles extracted from plants that are abundant, renewable, and sustainable. Here, we report on the first demonstration of efficient polymer solar cells fabricated on optically transparent cellulose nanocrystal (CNC) substrates. The solar cells fabricated on the CNC substrates display good rectification in the dark and reach a power conversion efficiency of 2.7%. In addition, we demonstrate that these solar cells can be easily separated and recycled into their major components using low-energy processes at room temperature, opening the door for a truly recyclable solar cell technology. Efficient and easily recyclable organic solar cells on CNC substrates are expected to be an attractive technology for sustainable, scalable, and environmentally-friendly energy production.

Bio-Organic Electronics—Overview and Prospects for the Future

“…Conventionally, plastic substrates such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polyethylene naphthalate (PEN), polycarbonate (PC), and polyimide (PI) have been widely used. However, decomposition for all these polymer foils may take 30-450 years [9], thus causing a serious waste problem in some areas of the world. In addition, their production costs are highly dependent on the oil price.…”

“…Polybutylene adipate-co-terephthalate (PBAT) (8) is a polymer with aromatic fragments. Polyesters are represented by polycaprolactone (PCL) (9), and polybutylene succinate (PBS) (10). Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) (11) has a rather simple structure compared to the aforementioned structures.…”

“…The complete decomposition in water has also been shown for OSC on cellulose nanocrystal substrates, which have achieved efficiency values of 2.7%. However, effects originating from the metal electrodes or the conventional organic semiconductors have not been addressed [9]. In the field of field effect transistors (FETs), flexible devices have been fabricated with cellulose paper as dielectric material and achieved results comparable to conventional PET or glass substrates.…”

Synthesis, Characterization and Synthetic Applications of Fly-ash:H3PO4 Nanocatalyst

“…Two decades ago the terms, such as nanoparticle [6], nanopowder [7], nanotube [8] and nanoplate [9], in addition to other related shape-based terms, rapidly became very common. During the past few years the concerted efforts of researchers have led to reports of an enormous number of the nanostructure types mentioned above and to the discovery of rarer species, such as nanodumbbells [10], nanoflowers [11], nanorices [11], nanolines [12], nanotowers [13], nanoshuttles [14], nanobowlings [15], nanowheels [16], nanofans [17], nanopencils [18], nanotrees [19], nanoarrows [20], nanonails [21], nanobottles [22], nanovolcanoes [23] and nanobiopolymers [24], among many others. Development of nanotechnology provides the 0-3 dimensional [25] nanomaterials such as clusters, particles, nanotubes, nanowires, nanoplates, layers, core/shell nanoparticles or self-assembled massives, intermediate dimensional nanostructures such as fractals or dendrimers, or the classification based on the following triad: symmetry, group-shell, composition-structural formula of the shell.…”

“…Comparatively the high yield of pyrazolines was obtained in solvent-free condensation. UVvisible, infrared and NMR spectroscopical data of pyrazolines (entries [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22] are presented in Table STVII (see supplementary data). …”