Self-organized nanostructures in hybrid solar cells

传统主流无机半导体技术已经取得了显著的成功。然而，微电子器件和元件的标准制造技术依赖于逐层组装过程，无法提供器件结构的三维控制。自然发生的复杂系统利用自组织的三维架构来提供超越单个组件属性的功能。为了生成高度结构化的无机材料，大自然通常使用有机模板。协调无机化学，有机化学，材料科学和半导体物理是纳米技术的机会之一。这一多学科研究领域提供了制造三维结构的工具，有望为材料复合材料提供新颖的功能。当今社会面临的最重要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。不同组分之间具有大界面表面积的高结构材料复合材料在电池、光伏和燃料电池等能源储存和发电中具有特别重要的意义。由于太阳能电池的潜在开发，目前对光伏响应的理想结构有很大的兴趣。挑战在于制造材料复合材料，吸收足够的阳光，从吸收的光中有效地产生电荷，这对于有机和混合（有机-无机）复合材料来说需要大的界面表面积，并具有有效的电荷收集途径到外部电路，后者与电荷重组竞争。在这里，自组织分子材料，特别是作为无机半导体架构模板的双嵌段共聚物将被开发并集成到原型低成本混合光伏系统中。第一笔拨款项目的具体目标是开发新型光伏系统，以超越当前最先进的技术，并大大提高我们对纳米结构复合材料和软硬半导体界面中物理现象的理解。

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.