Hybrid Materials for Photovoltaics Group Research groups

Solar energy is probably the best alternative to replace the use of fossil fuels, as the Earth receives daily all the energy currently required in the world for a year. Obviously the challenge is to be able to transform all that solar energy into electricity in an efficient manner. Currently more than 85% of the PV market corresponds to modules based on silicon wafers with conversion efficiency over 15%. This technology still has a high cost compared to conventional methods of electricity production.

In recent years, other type of photovoltaic technologies based on organic or hybrid materials have been developed achieving promising efficiencies of conversion on research solar cells (12.8%).

Although for the photovoltaic community, the most important finding of this new century is the use of perovskites to manufacture solar cells. Perovskite-based solar cells can change the photovoltaic scenario at industrial level, since they allow the introduction of new processing techniques compatible with micro/nanotechnology showing higher production capacity and lower energy consumption than conventional semiconductor technologies.

In the past years, perovskite-based solar cells, have shown great potential, achieving energy conversion efficiencies around 20%. However, some of the proposed materials still have some limitations, particularly in terms of cost and stability. Within perovskite solar cells, the development of new materials able to transport charge is a challenging research field. So far, just a few well-defined, small molecules have been used for this purpose (spiro-OMeTAD, Fullerenes) while the use of polymers as charge carriers has been less explored.


Science field

Physical Sciences

Institution
Polymat
RIS3 Priorities
  • Energy
Main researcher
Juan Luis Delgado
Address
Centro Joxe Mari Korta Center Tolosa Avenue, 72, 20018. Donostia-San Sebastián · Spain
How to arrive
Main research lines
  • Synthesis and characterization Novel Hole and Electron conducting Materials for PSC.
  • Synthesis and characterization Novel Perovskite Materials.
  • Synthesis and characterization New Dyes for DSSCs.