TUESDAY, 31 AUGUST 2010
Solar panels absorb energy from the sunlight and dissociate the charges to produce an electric current. Organic solar panels use conjugated polymers for light absorption. Until now, a technical difficulty had been that the charge dissociation of these materials is very poor and photo-induces energy that cannot be collected efficiently.
Yana Vaynzof and his Cambridge team added an extra layer of material to overcome this problem: their system still relies on a organic polymer to catch the light, but works with an metal-oxide layer underneath it to increase the charge dissociation. This improved the efficiency of the solar panel from 30% for the unmodified devices to nearly 100% for panels with a metal-oxide layer.
Written by Sara Deitz
![](mailto:?subject=Sun + Plastic Sheet = Energy&body=https://bluesci.uk/posts/sun-plastic-sheet-energy <div class='caption'><div id="attachment_1227" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="A conventional solar cell"><strong><strong><a href="https://bluesci.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Solar_cell.png"><img class="size-medium wp-image-1227" title="From: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Solar_cell.png" src="https://bluesci.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Solar_cell-300x268.png" alt="" width="300" height="268" /></a></strong></strong></div></div>Organic solar cells have significant advantages over conventional solar cells: they have a low impact on the environment, manufacturing is cheap and because they based on flexible plastic sheets their applications outperform the current use of solar panels.<br><br>Solar panels absorb energy from the sunlight and dissociate the charges to produce an electric current. Organic solar panels use conjugated polymers for light absorption. Until now, a technical difficulty had been that the charge dissociation of these materials is very poor and photo-induces energy that cannot be collected efficiently.<br><br>Yana Vaynzof and his Cambridge team added an extra layer of material to overcome this problem: their system still relies on a organic polymer to catch the light, but works with an metal-oxide layer underneath it to increase the charge dissociation. This improved the efficiency of the solar panel from 30% for the unmodified devices to nearly 100% for panels with a metal-oxide layer.<br><br>Written by Sara Deitz){kind=link}