Research on Organic Solar Cells (OSCs)

Renewable energy is a growing necessity to combat environmental concerns. Organic solar cells have demonstrated their potential to solve these concerns by converting solar radiation into electrical energy through the use of organic semiconductors. Compared to their inorganic counterparts, these semiconductors offer low toxicity and cost-effective processing techniques. Generally, OSCs require layers of various materials, nanometers to micrometers in thickness, that efficiently transfer charges to the two electrodes. This process requires precise HOMO and LUMO energy level alignment of solid-state materials while also maintaining good film morphologies and overlap of intermolecular pi-systems. Our group explores a variety of benzobisoxazole, benzobisthiazole, and benzodithiophene based materials that absorb in the visible region of the light spectrum. These materials have been shown to produce good device properties and reasonable power conversion efficiencies under the correct processing conditions.