Broadly tuneable probe source for transient absorption spectroscopy over sub-millisecond time windows

收集太阳能是本世纪的一项关键努力，因为我们面临着化石燃料世界储量不断减少和温室气体排放引发的日益严重的环境危机。太阳能电池技术目前是基于硅的。用于人类能源消耗的设备产生约10%的太阳能转换效率，这足以满足工业化世界相当大一部分能源需求，但制造此类设备的能源成本太高，并会产生温室气体。为了收回这样的能源成本，需要三到四年的连续运行。这种能源回报是这项技术广泛实施的一个严重障碍，而不是那些寿命较长的技术，即25至30年。为了让太阳能对我们的能源需求产生更大的影响，我们需要找到减少能源回收期和设备处理成本的替代技术。我们的研究小组专注于共轭聚合物，它现在提供了一种技术上可行的可溶液处理、成膜的半导体。

Harvesting solar energy is a key endeavour for this century as we face ever-decreasing fossil fuel world reserves and ever-increasing environmental crises emanating from greenhouse gas production. Solar cell technology is currently based on silicon. Devices used for human energy consumption yield solar power conversion efficiencies of around 10%, which is sufficient to meet a significant fraction of energy demands in the industrialised world, but manufacturing such devices costs too much energy and produces greenhouse gases. In order to recover such energetic costs, three to four years of continuous operation are required. This energy payback represents a serious obstacle to widespread implementation of this technology other than those with long lifetime expectancy, i.e. 25 to 30 years. In order for solar energy to have a more substantial impact on our energy requirements, we need to find alternative technologies that reduce energy payback periods and device processing costs. Our research group focuses on conjugated polymers, which now provide a technologically viable class of solution-processable, film-forming semiconductors.