Scientists at Stanford exploit disorders in plastic solar cell to improve performance

Scientists at Stanford University have noticed plastic material used for solar photovoltaic cells have structural differences with silicon solar PV cell. They cannot be used or made like the way silicon solar PV cells made. The disorders at the molecule level are exploited by scientists to build plastic solar PV cells of higher efficiency. Most of the solar researchers are following similar process what they are followed for silicon to make plastic solar cells, which is not working. "People used to think that if you made the polymers more like silicon they would perform better," said study co-author Alberto Salleo, an associate professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford. "But we found that polymers don't naturally form nice, well-ordered crystals. They form small, disordered ones, and that's perfectly fine." Instead of trying to mimic the rigid structure of silicon, Salleo and his colleagues recommend that scientists learn to cope with the inherently disordered nature of plastics. Standard team have used organic material known as conjugated semiconducting polymer which is conductive and optoelectronic in nature. This organic semiconductor material is also a good material for light emitting diodes. Since it is plastic/polymer, manufacturing solar devices out of this material can be done at room temperature with printing technologies and other such less-exp...