Abstract
Organic photovoltaic cells based on bulk-heterojunction architecture have been a topic of intense research for the past two decades. Recent reports on power conversion efficiency surpassing 10% suggest these devices are a viable low-cost choice for a range of applications where conventional silicon solar cells are not suitable. Further improvements in efficiency could be achieved with the enhanced interaction between the donor and acceptor components. Effective utilization of supramolecular interactions to tailor and manipulate the communication between the components in the blend is a good strategy towards this end. Literature reports suggest that the long-term stability of organic solar cells, a major hurdle for commercial applications, can also be partially addressed by generating stable supramolecular nanostructures. In this review, we have made an attempt to summarize advances in small molecule, oligomer and polymer based systems, wherein supramolecular interactions such as hydrogen-bonding, pi-pi stacking, and dipole-dipole are explored for realizing stable and efficient bulk-heterojunction solar cells.
Highlights
Solar radiation is a prime source of energy and its abundant availability on Earth’s surface makes it a perfect candidate for clean and renewable sources of electricity [1,2,3]
The first generation solar technology, can convert ~25% of the energy in sunlight to electricity and the second generation cells composed of amorphous silicon, cadmium telluride (CdTe) and copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS)
Scientists have done intense research in the field of third generation photovoltaics, organic solar cells (OSC) as it has the potential to serve as an alternative to silicon-based cells in terms of cost effectiveness, light weightiness, roll-to-roll fabrication, mechanical flexibility in addition to the use of low-cost solution processing techniques for large area fabrication [8,9,10,11,12,13]
Summary
Solar radiation is a prime source of energy and its abundant availability on Earth’s surface makes it a perfect candidate for clean and renewable sources of electricity [1,2,3]. Though both these photovoltaic technologies have good performance and stability, they need highly expensive clean-room technology and require a lot of energy in production [7] To address these problems, scientists have done intense research in the field of third generation photovoltaics, organic solar cells (OSC) as it has the potential to serve as an alternative to silicon-based cells in terms of cost effectiveness, light weightiness, roll-to-roll fabrication, mechanical flexibility in addition to the use of low-cost solution processing techniques for large area fabrication [8,9,10,11,12,13].
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