COmbined Spectroscopy and Molecular-scale Imaging of Conjugated polymers

ongoing

COSMIC is an ambitious research project aimed at addressing a critical challenge in organic photovoltaics (OPVs), particularly their long-term stability, which is essential for enhancing their contribution to renewable energy solutions and tackling climate change. OPVs, which are lightweight, flexible, and can be integrated into a wide range of applications—from building-integrated photovoltaics to solar-powered greenhouses and aerospace technologies—represent a promising alternative to traditional silicon-based solar panels. However, despite recent advancements, OPVs face performance degradation over time due to the instability of their active materials. The central focus of COSMIC is to gain unprecedented molecular-level insights into the microstructure of conjugated block copolymers, a key class of materials recently proposed in OPVs to tackle the stability problem. These materials combine electron donor and acceptor molecules into a single polymer chain, a design with great potential for enhancing OPV performance. However, the precise arrangement and interaction of D and A units at the molecular level are still not fully understood, limiting further advancements. COSMIC will employ cutting-edge techniques such as scanning tunnelling microscopy and photoemission spectroscopy to study the molecular structure, assembly, and electronic properties of these materials with unprecedented resolution. The project is structured around three core objectives: characterising the molecular-scale structure and electronic properties of PM6/Y6 and PM6-b-Y6 polymers at the molecular level, correlating these insights with OPV device performance, and feeding this knowledge back into the synthesis process to enable optimisation through rational design. The outcomes of COSMIC are expected to have a wide-reaching impact, advancing OPV technology by making it more efficient and stable while demonstrating a novel methodology for characterising complex functional molecular systems.