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Molecular Nanoprisms as Efficient Electron-Transporting Materials

Research Project
 | 
01.09.2018
 - 31.08.2019

The global warming threats leave us no choice but to rely on the production of clean energy, where the solar energy will become our most important source to produce electricity due to its abundance from the sun. This, however, requires implementation of inexpensive and environmentally friendly materials into solar cells. In this regard, organic materials offer the solution because they can be produced cheaply on a large scale. The problem with organic photovoltaic devices is, however, their low power conversion efficiency, which is a consequence of the short exciton-diffusion lengths and imbalanced charge transport in organic materials with lower mobility of electrons than that of holes. Simultaneously, the best performing electron-transporting materials in organic solar cells, namely, fullerenes, absorb visible light poorly, are hard to modify, and expensive to produce. In this research proposal, the synthesis and experimental investigation of molecular nanoprisms with built-in visible-light absorbing molecular electron acceptors as their triangular base is described. The symmetric spatial arrangement of the molecular electron acceptor units, their mutual distance and orientation in these nanoprisms will allow for extensive radial electron delocalization and, consequently, for efficient charge separation in an active layer of a solar cell. The possibility of the controlled growth of the nanoprisms by well-defined synthetic methods permits to incorporate various combinations of donor-acceptor motifs into the nanoprisms to tune their photophysical and redox properties. The unique three-dimensional shape and the aspect ratio of these nanoprisms will allow them to efficiently transport electrons in the materials incorporating them. Such favorable properties of these molecules will, one day, allow to make efficient organic solar cells competitive with other photovoltaic technologies.

Funding

Molecular Nanoprisms as Efficient Electron-Transporting Materials

Forschungsfonds (Excellent Junior Researcher) (GrantsTool), 09.2018-09.2019 (13)
PI : Solomek, Tomas.

Members (1)

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Tomas Solomek

Principal Investigator