A polymer tandem solar cell with 10.6% power conversion efficiency

By Jingbi You, L. Dou, Ken Yoshimura, T. Kato, K. Ohya, T. Moriarty, K. Emery, Chun‐Chao Chen, Jing Gao, Gang Li and 1 more. Nature Communications, 2013

2,711 citations recorded by the source corpus.

An effective way to improve polymer solar cell efficiency is to use a tandem structure, as a broader part of the spectrum of solar radiation is used and the thermalization loss of photon energy is minimized. In the past, the lack of high-performance low-bandgap polymers was the major limiting factor for achieving high-performance tandem solar cell. Here we report the development of a high-performance low bandgap polymer (bandgap <1.4 eV), poly[2,7-(5,5-bis-(3,7-dimethyloctyl)-5H-dithieno[3,2-b:2′,3′-d]pyran)-alt-4,7-(5,6-difluoro-2,1,3-benzothia diazole)] with a bandgap of 1.38 eV, high mobility, deep highest occupied molecular orbital. As a result, a single-junction device shows high external quantum efficiency of >60% and spectral response that extends to 900 nm, with a power conversion efficiency of 7.9%. The polymer enables a solution processed tandem solar cell with certified 10.6% power conversion efficiency under standard reporting conditions (25 °C, 1,000 Wm−2, IEC 60904-3 global), which is the first certified polymer solar cell efficiency over 10%. Tandem solar cell structures combine high- and low-bandgap materials, allowing a broader spectral absorption of solar radiation. The authors report the synthesis of a high performance low-bandgap polymer which enables fabrication of a tandem solar cell with a certified power conversion efficiency of 10.6%.

Subfields: Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Polymers and Plastics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/08f7013fa21a6a5da43595846bbdae166cfbe97d

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

1. Yang Yang
2. Gang Li
3. Z. Hong
4. Jingbi You
5. L. Dou
6. Nunzio Motta
7. Muhsen Aljada
8. Jinzhang Liu

In Polymers and Plastics

1. Yang Yang
2. Gang Li
3. Z. Hong
4. L. Dou
5. Jingbi You
6. Nunzio Motta
7. Muhsen Aljada
8. Jinzhang Liu

Citations in the corpus

• Plasmonic effect of gold nanoparticles in organic solar cells (2014, background): “Other groups are working on combining low band gap polymers with high band gap polymers in a specific device called a tandem organic solar cell achieving efficiencies higher than 10% (Dou et al., 2012; You et al., 2013).”