Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

Finding sufficient clean energy has been listed as the greatest challenge facing humanity in the 21st century. Solar energy conversion directly to electricity via photovoltaic (PV) devices is one of the most attractive solutions if it could be done with high conversion efficiency and low cost of fabrication. Organic PV (OPV) devices which can be easily fabricated by low-cost solution processing over large areas are considered as a highly promising alternative to traditional Si PV devices. Although an efficiency of ~8% was announced for OPV cells very recently, further significant enhancement in efficiency is required for them to become competitive with Si technology in practical applications. A promising pathway is to harvest near infrared (NIR) photons, which have been left untapped in current OPV devices. Another challenge of OPV cells is related to the replacement of indium tin oxide electrodes, by far the most widely used transparent electrodes, with lower-cost and more compatible transparent electrodes. This proposal aims to develop proof-of-concept, solution processable, highly NIR efficient OPV cells by fully exploiting nanostructured materials both as NIR photoactive layers as well as surface plasmon enhanced transparent electrodes. Specifically, the NIR layer is to be formed by an optimized combination of NIR absorbing quantum dots and high-mobility carbon nanotubes (CNTs) or graphene and further, their optimal integration into polymers. Plasmonic metal nanoparticles will be tailored and deposited onto a transparent graphene electrode in such a way to further increase the light trapping and thereby absorption of the active layer in the NIR region. This project will be carried out in collaboration with Canadian Solar and OLA Display. The main benefits of this project will be: (i)to DEVELOP EXPERTISE in renewable energy; (ii)to TRAIN HIGHLY QUALIFIED PERSONNEL; (iii)to HELP CANADIAN HIGH-TECH COMPANIES remain competitive by keeping abreast of the latest developments in the rapidly growing field of nanomaterials-based OPV cells; and (iv)to STRENGTHEN CANADIAN LEADERSHIP in the field of innovative PV technologies.