Light Weight, Flexible, Nanostructured Organic Solar Cells for Space Applications

Improving the efficiency of organic solar cells (OSCs), which are far less efficient than inorganic semiconductor solar cells, is of paramount importance to the field of polymer photovoltaics. Current state-of-the-art bulk heterojunction (BHJ) OSCs utilize a homogeneous blend of the semiconducting polymer poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) and the fullerene derivative [6,6]-phenyl C61butyric acid methylester (PCBM). Cells with this architecture exhibit only 6.5% efficiency and suffer poor transport of free charge carriers due to charge trapping. Highly ordered nanotechnologies can be used with vertically nanostructured active blends to ensure paths to the electrodes and to reduce recombination resulting in increased efficiencies. This paper details a facile solution based process to fabricate ZnO nanorods for the use of hybrid nanostructured OSCs. Successful development of nanotechnologies to produce highly ordered vertically arrayed nanostructures would have a tremendous impact on photovoltaic technology resulting in cheap direct replacements for current Si solar cells in the form of solution processable photovoltaic materials.