Danish-Chinese Center for Organic-based Photovoltaics with Morphological Control

Danish-Chinese Center for Organic-based Photovoltaics with Morphological Control was established September 1, 2010 as a corporation between Zhejiang University and Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Science in China and Aalborg University and Risø DTU in Denmark. Together these four laboratories have experience and equipment to ensure a leading position in the international world of solar cells. The Center will cement the cooperation between Danish and Chinese research environments, each with its own expertise in the field of new types of solar cells.

Background

The Sun is a virtually inexhaustible source of energy and certainly part of the answer to the major challenge of providing the world's population with sustainable energy in the future. Mankind, however, has not yet found ways to utilize solar energy efficiently, and today it offers only a limited contribution to our overall energy consumption.

Existing solar cells based on crystalline silicon have been in existence for more than 50 years, and the technology offers in practice efficiencies of up to 15-20%, but at a fairly high price. It has taken decades slowly to bring the price down. A clear goal is < 1 € per Watt, a goal which for crystalline silicon-based solar cells still has a long way to go. Alternatively it is possible to think in terms of completely new types of solar cells which fundamentally break with the costly manufacturing methods of the traditional solar cells.

In this context, organic based solar cells have the advantage of low-temperature; vacuum free, low-cost, large area, solution-based manufacturing via different printing and coating techniques and allowing the use of flexible substrates. During the last decades bulk heterojunction solar cells based on a donor and acceptor material have been widely studied and efficiencies up to 3.5% have been obtained for solar cells based on P3HT (poly(3-hexylthiophene)) as electron donor and PCBM (1-(3-methoxycarbonyl)-propyl-1-phenyl-(6,6)-C₆₁) as electron acceptor. Recently solar cells based on low band gap polymers as electron donor materials have been studied widely and the efficiency is starting to increase. But still, the criterion of efficiency presently limits the commercialization of the organic-based solar cells

Aim

Foundation of Danish-Chinese Center for Organic-based Photovoltaics with Morphological Control provides the opportunity to establish extended and long lasting co-operation between Danish and Chinese research within the field of solar cells.

Sponsors

Page updated by 24.02.2012

Frederik C Krebs
Professor
Solar Energy Programme (SOL)
Dir tel+45 46774799