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A crew of researchers led by Professor Philip C.Y. Chow from the Division of Mechanical Engineering on the College of Hong Kong (HKU) has made a major breakthrough within the discipline of natural photovoltaics.
Their analysis, titled “The function of interfacial donor-acceptor percolation in environment friendly and steady all-polymer photo voltaic cells,” paves the best way for extra sustainable and viable photo voltaic power options for day by day purposes. The invention was printed as a featured article within the scientific journal Nature Communications.
Natural photovoltaics (OPV), which employs cost-effective, printable, and environmentally pleasant polymer semiconductors, holds great potential for producing sustainable and renewable power. Nonetheless, because of the mushy nature of polymers, attaining OPV units with each excessive effectivity and lengthy operation stability has been a long-standing analysis problem.
The analysis crew’s work has make clear the best way to overcome this problem. The crew targeted their analysis on a brand new sort of electron-accepting molecule referred to as Y6, which, when polymerised, has proven nice promise in enabling environment friendly and steady OPV units. By investigating the ultrafast cost dynamics utilizing femtosecond laser pulses, the researchers first found that controlling the diploma of aggregation of the polymerised Y6 acceptors (Y6-PAs) performs a vital function in selling electrical energy technology.
The analysis crew additional revealed that Y6-PAs exhibit increased miscibility with the donor polymer in comparison with small molecular acceptors of the identical sort. This miscibility permits for the formation of a nanoscale percolation community on the heterojunction interface, stopping the aggregation of Y6-PAs. This nanoscale percolation not solely enhances cost technology effectivity but additionally considerably improves the steadiness of the polymer mix morphology, decreasing the loss in system efficiency over time when uncovered to photo voltaic illumination.
In response to this breakthrough, Prof Philip C.Y. Chow expressed his enthusiasm, stating: “Our discovery opens up new potentialities for the event of environment friendly and steady polymer-based photo voltaic PV panels, paving the best way for extra sustainable and viable photo voltaic power options that may be seamlessly built-in into the environment, together with buildings, automobiles, digital merchandise and even garments.”
The research was carried out collaboratively with Professor Harald Ade’s crew from North Carolina State College within the USA, Professor Yuanping Yi’s crew from the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese language Academy of Science, and Professor Hin-Lap Yip’s crew from the Metropolis College of Hong Kong. This interdisciplinary collaboration allowed for the mixing of experience from a number of analysis teams, together with ultrafast optical spectroscopy, quantum chemical modelling, synchrotron X-ray scattering and photo voltaic cell system manufacturing. Dr Zhen Wang, a Publish-doctoral Fellow in Prof Chow’s crew at HKU, was the primary creator of this research.
