Understanding, Predicting and Enhancing the Stability of Organic Photovoltaics

ongoing

Photovoltaics is a major pillar in tackling climate change, one of the biggest current threats to humankind. Organic photovoltaics (OPV) could significantly contribute to this, as organic solar cells can be manufactured in efficient and low-cost roll-to-roll processes and are already reaching power conversion efficiencies above 19%. However, in order to have a large impact, the long-term stability OPV has to be improved to obtain lifetimes of many years. Therefore, OPVStability aims to develop (i) an in-depth understanding of the degradation mechanisms and stability-promoting factors of organic photovoltaic materials and solar cells, (ii) tools to predict the lifetime of organic solar cells and to identify stable structural motifs as well as device architectures and (iii) innovative strategies to significantly enhance the stability of efficient OPV of the next generation. OPVStability combines partners from academia and industry with a strong background in OPV and/or specialized scientific methods including theoretical calculations and simulations, experimental degradation studies on single materials, materials combinations and interfaces, accelerated aging and outdoor stability measurements, advanced synchrotron-based analytics, high-throughput experiments and machine learning approaches. Within OPVStability, ten PhD-students work on this timely and interdisciplinary research project accompanied with an excellent training program comprising scientific skills as well as a comprehensive set of soft and transferable skills.