{"id":134821,"date":"2022-01-28T06:23:55","date_gmt":"2022-01-28T14:23:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/01\/illuminating-how-solvent-additives-improve-efficiency-in-polymer-solar-cells"},"modified":"2022-01-28T06:23:55","modified_gmt":"2022-01-28T14:23:55","slug":"illuminating-how-solvent-additives-improve-efficiency-in-polymer-solar-cells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/01\/illuminating-how-solvent-additives-improve-efficiency-in-polymer-solar-cells","title":{"rendered":"Illuminating how solvent additives improve efficiency in polymer solar cells"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

All-polymer blend solar cells are expected to play an important role in the transition to clean energy technologies because they can be easily produced in large-scale flexible sheets. However, their performance has lagged behind that of more traditional silicon alternatives, as well as other organic solar cells.<\/p>\n

All-polymer blend solar cells<\/a> are formed by combining two polymer solutions that solidify into a film on an electrode with in the form of interpenetrating networks, a kind of \u201cphase-separation.\u201d The introduction of solvent additives to the polymer solution has been shown to increase the efficiency of all-polymer blend solar cells<\/a>. However, the exact process underlying this improvement has not been fully understood. Now, in a study recently published in ACS Applied Polymer Materials<\/i>, researchers from Nara Institute of Science and Technology have investigated the performance enhancement mechanism using photoconductive atomic force microscopy (PC-AFM). Their findings are expected to help accelerate the widespread application of polymer-based solar cells.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe empirical nature of solvent additive-mediated efficiency enhancement has hindered the optimization of all-polymer blend solar cell performance, so there has been an urgent need for a greater understanding of the process,\u201d explains senior author Hiroaki Benten. \u201cTo that end, we used PC-AFM to interrogate the nanoarchitecture that underpins the performance enhancement.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All-polymer blend solar cells are expected to play an important role in the transition to clean energy technologies because they can be easily produced in large-scale flexible sheets. However, their performance has lagged behind that of more traditional silicon alternatives, as well as other organic solar cells. All-polymer blend solar cells are formed by combining [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1633,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-solar-power","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134821\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}