Polymer solar cells are now cheaper and more reliable with the new discoveries of scientists. They worked at Linkoping University and Chinese Academy of Science for this research.

A Breakthrough in low cost and high efficient free polymer solar cells are developed by scientists who set a new world record. These polymer solar cells emerged as an alternative and gets at low cost. This is an alternative for silicon solar cells. These used in polymer solar cells to separate charge carriers to obtain high efficiency.

Fullerenes are unstable under illumination and form large crystals at high temperatures. A polymer called PBDB-T and a small molecule called ITIC are developed by researchers team led by Professor Jianhui Hou at Chinese Academy of Science (CAS).

The sun energy in converted with an efficiency of 11 percent , which strikes most solar cells with fullerenes and all without fullerenes with the same combination. The loss spectroscopy of photovoltage (VoC) is characterized by researchers. They also proposed approaches further improving the device performance.

“We have demonstrated that it is possible to achieve a high efficiency without using fullerene and that such solar cells are also highly stable to heat. Because solar cells are working under constant solar radiation, good thermal stability is very important,” said Feng Gao, from Linkoping University in Sweden.

“The combination of high efficiency and good thermal stability suggest that polymer solar cells, which can be easily manufactured using low-cost roll-to-roll printing technology, now come to a step closer to commercialisation,” said Gao.