Hybrid Polymer Solar Cells based on Metal Oxide Precursors

The ever increasing price of oil is a great stimulus for finding new un-conventional energy recourses. In terms of energy and material cost, silicon based technologies for solar cells require a high cost of manufacturing. New direct band-gap materials like conjugated polymers and several inorganic semiconductor materials allow thinner devices produced with less material and at greater ease. Hybrid polymer solar cells combine conjugated polymers and inorganic materials in a bulk heterojunction photovoltaic device, which is fabricated by spin cast procedures. This project proposes the use of ZnO precursors to allow the simple fabrication of blends of the inorganic semiconductor ZnO and several conjugated polymers. The proposed Zn-heterocubane precursor has many advantages over precursors that have been tried previously, compared to early work using ZnO and TiO2 precursors; the new precursor is air-stable and easy to handle. The possibility, to handle this precursor in ambient, without irreversible damage to the conjugated polymer is expected to lead to a significant improvement of the photovoltaic properties of the solar cells. Improved compatibility with conjugated polymers, will allow for screening of combinations of different polymers including low band gap polymers, and is expected to lead to more efficient photovoltaic devices. ZnO precursors cast on polymers films open new ways towards smart solar cell designs, a procedure that will be used to make tandem type of photovoltaic devices. Even though ZnO is not harvesting much solar light itself, ZnO will prove to be an easy to handle and versatile material for application on efficient photovoltaic devices; it is not without reason that ZnO is showing a big revival in several applications and devices, as is obvious from the numerous publications concerning ZnO in recent years.