Self-organized nanostructures in hybrid solar cells

传统的主流无机半导体技术已经取得了显著的成功。然而，微电子器件和组件的标准制造技术依赖于逐层组装过程，无法提供对设备架构的三维控制。自然产生的复杂系统利用自组织三维体系结构来提供超出单个组件属性的功能。为了生成高度结构化的无机材料，自然界通常使用有机模板。无机化学、有机化学、材料科学和半导体物理之间的协调是纳米技术领域的机遇之一。这一多学科研究领域提供了制造三维建筑的工具，有望为材料复合材料提供新的功能。当今社会面临的最重大和最紧迫的挑战之一是生产清洁的可再生能源，以维持经济增长并减少我们对环境的负面影响。在电池、光伏、燃料电池等能源储存和发电领域，具有较大界面面积的高结构材料复合材料尤为重要。由于太阳能电池的潜在开发，目前人们对理想的光伏响应结构有很大的兴趣。挑战在于如何制备能够吸收足够的太阳光、有效地从吸收的光中产生电荷的材料复合材料，对于有机和杂化(有机-无机)复合材料来说，这需要很大的界面表面积，并且具有通往外部电路的高效电荷收集路径，后者与电荷复合竞争。在这里，将开发自组织分子材料，特别是作为无机半导体结构模板的双嵌段共聚合物，并将其集成到低成本混合光伏系统的原型中。第一批赠款项目的具体目标是开发性能优于当前最先进水平的新型光伏系统，并极大地提高我们对纳米结构复合材料内以及软硬半导体界面上发生的物理现象的理解。

Traditional mainstream inorganic semiconductor technology has been remarkably successful. However, standard fabrication techniques of microelectronic devices and components rely on a layer-by-layer assembly process and fall short of delivering three dimensional control of device architecture. Naturally-occurring complex systems utilize self-organising three dimensional architectures to deliver functionality beyond the properties of the individual components. To generate highly structured inorganic materials nature usually employs organic templates. Coordinating between inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry, material science and semiconductor physics is one of the opportunities within nanotechnology. This area of multidisciplinary research provides the tools to fabricate three dimensional architectures which promise to deliver novel functionality to material composites. One of the most significant and pressing challenges to face society today is to generate clean renewable power, in order to sustain economic growth and to reduce our negative impact upon the environment. Highly structured material composites with large interfacial surface area between dissimilar components are of particular importance in energy storage and generation, such as batteries, photovoltaics and fuel cells. There is significant current interest in structures ideal for the photovoltaic response due to the potential exploitation as solar cells. The challenge is in fabricating material composites which absorb sufficient sun light, generate charge effectively from the absorbed light, which for organic and hybrid (organic-inorganic) composites requires a large interfacial surface area, and have efficient charge collection pathways to an external circuit, the latter competing with charge recombination. Here, self-organising molecular materials, and specifically di-block co-polymers as templates for inorganic semiconductor architectures will be developed and integrated into prototype low-cost hybrid photovoltaic systems. Specific objectives within this First Grant Project are to develop novel photovoltaic systems which out perform the current state-of-the-art and to greatly enhance our understanding of the physics occurring within nanostructured composites and at the interface between hard and soft semiconductors.