87% of global energy production in 2010 was derived from unsustainable fossil fuels and as energy consumption grows, we urgently need to move towards renewable, clean energy sources to ensure national and international energy security. Only ~36 kWh/day/person could realistically be generated by non-solar renewables, falling short of the global target for energy requirements of 80 kWh/day/person. Therefore, without relying on nuclear energy, we must ensure that solar energy fills the gap. To meet demand, we require as many on- and off-grid photovoltaic (PV) technologies as possible and development of sustainable, low-energy and material-light technologies should be prioritized. In this context, ink-jet printing organic semiconductors is highly attractive.

Our project aims to use similar processing techniques to demonstrate a dramatic step change in PV efficiency to
match that of transistors. Such a step change requires a global consortium such as ours, including world-leading chemists (USA), physicists/engineers (UK) and material scientists (Japan) as well as knowledge of market requirements (Organic PV company). We aim to tackle the whole PV cycle, from materials to exploitation. In particular concentrating on
(i) sustainable approaches to organic semiconductor synthesis, potentially allowing organic PVs to be made out of bio waste such as corn stover,
(ii) creating highly ordered PVs using novel adapted ink-jet printing and vapor-phase deposition (and comparing the two techniques)
(iii) quantitatively characterising the single crystal structure, physics and morphology
(iv) characterizing the finished PVs, including stability and lifetime.

Constant feedback between the groups will be used to optimize the materials and processing techniques to develop revolutionary >10% efficient sustainable PVs.

Potential Impact:
With our proposed approach we are aiming to lift the efficiency of printed organic solar cells to levels comparable to those of competing inorganic thin film PV technologies. Our target efficiency for the project is to realize an efficiency of 10% with our novel bilayer, molecular crystal architecture and to demonstrate the potential for achieving efficiencies of 15%. This would constitute the necessary scientific breakthrough that could pave the way for organic solar cell technology to achieve lower cost of electricity than inorganic PV technologies and ultimately to match the cost of electricity achievable with burning fossil fuels.