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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SEPOMO (Spins for Efficient Photovoltaic Devices based on Organic Molecules)

Teaser

Summary

Organic solar cells have the potential to become an environmental friendly, inexpensive, large area and flexible photovoltaics technology. Their main advantages are low process temperatures, the potential for very low cost due to abundant materials and scalable processing, and the possibility of producing flexible devices on plastic substrates. To improve their commercialization capacity and to complement other renewable energy technologies, the performance of state-of-the-art organic solar cells needs to be further improved.

Our goals within ITN SEPOMO â€“ Spins in Efficient Photovoltaic devices based on Organic Molecules â€“ are to bring the performance of organic solar cells forward by taking advantage of the so far unexplored degree of freedom of photogenerated species in organic materials, their spin. This challenging idea provides a unified platform for excellent research to recruit and train 15 strongly motivated Early Stage Researchers for a career in science and technology and to promote the world-wide position of Europe in the field of organic photovoltaics and electronics. Our scientific objectives are to develop several novel routes to enhance the efficiency of organic solar cells by understanding and exploiting the electronic spin interactions.

Work performed

In the first two years period, we have successfully recruited 15 highly motivated and talented Early Stage Researchers.

Scientifically, we:
- Decided on triplet sensitizer in view of triplet-triplet annihilation.
- Chose the architecture of the active layer and in view of the device performance indicators.
- Selected design of second batch of donors in view of singlet-triplet gap.
- Established feasibility of electron back transfer suppression based on singlet-triplet gap engineered materials.
- Created modelling framework to compute electronic structure and optical properties of molecules in solution and in the solid.

In addition, we have organized two Network Wide Training Events (NWE) in Angers, France (November 2017) and Dresden, Germany (April 2018):
- Network Schools with lectures on the Design and Synthesis of Organic Materials (NWE1) and Processing of Organic Solar Cells (NWE2).
- Network Workshops on Literature Search, Academic Writing, Presentation Skills & Delivery, Scientific Integrity, Figure Making, My Own Solar Cell, Self- and Time Management, Introduction and Characterization of Organic Solar Cells (EQE, IV, sensitive EQE).
- Network Meetings with oral presentations by the researchers and scientific discussions.

So far, 6 scientific articles have been published in which SEPOMO researchers are (co-) author.

Final results

We will address crucial bottlenecks in state-of-the-art organic solar cells: to increase the quantum efficiency by reducing the dominant recombination losses and by enhancing the light harvesting and exciton generation, e.g. by means of internal upconversion of excited states.
Our Early Stage Researchers are being trained within the interdisciplinary (physics, chemistry, engineering) and intersectoral (academia, R&D centers, and enterprises) consortium in highly relevant fundamental yet application-oriented research with the potential to commercialise the results. The hard and soft skills learned in our network are central for the Early Stage Researchers to further pursue their individual careers in academics or industry.