Development of Soluble Small Molecules for use in Plastic Solar Cells

诺贝尔奖获得者发现有机聚合物可以作为半导体，这导致了世界范围内的学术和工业研究，重点是这些材料的开发及其在照明、晶体管和太阳能电池等电子设备中的应用。与传统的无机材料相比，有机材料提供了将溶液处理到轻质和灵活的基材上的能力。具体地说，这种导电油墨可以通过卷对卷制造技术进行打印，类似于报纸印刷，使这些技术具有极高的成本效益。 材料创新是有机电子学发展的一个重要方面。这一建议是基于最近的一项发现，即定义明确的小分子可以通过从溶液中加工形成所需的结构。到目前为止，溶液处理需要高分子量的聚合物，这些聚合物具有复杂的超分子结构，而低分子量物种需要通过真空升华沉积。将精确的分子合成和溶液处理的优点结合起来，为有机电子学的发展提供了一个非常重要的新机遇。 拟议的研究重点是开发用于有机太阳能电池的新型可溶小分子。有机太阳能电池比传统的无机电池更轻、更灵活、半透明、更环保。这些特性为令人兴奋的新应用打开了可能性，包括建筑集成和便携式太阳能。该项目的成功完成将培养出在化学和材料科学方面受过广泛教育的训练有素的人才，并从科学上提高有机太阳能电池的性能和可靠性，使这项技术距离广泛商业化又近了一步。

The Nobel prize winning discovery that organic polymers can act as semiconductors has led to a worldwide academic and industrial research effort focused on the development of these materials and their utilization in electronic devices including lighting, transistors, and solar cells. Compared to traditional inorganic materials, organics offer the ability to be processed from solution onto light weight and flexible substrates. Specifically, such 'conductive inks' can be printed via roll to roll fabrication techniques, similar to that of newspaper printing, making these technologies extremely cost effective. Materials innovation represents a critical aspect for the progression of organic electronics. This proposal is based off the very recent discovery that well-defined small molecules can form desirable structures through processing from solution. Until now, solution processing has required high molecular weight polymers which suffer from complex supramolecular structures, whereas low molecular weight species have required deposition by vacuum sublimation. Combining the virtue of well-defined molecular synthesis with those of solution processing provides a very important new opportunity for the advancement of organic electronics. The proposed research is focused on the development of new soluble small molecules for use in organic solar cells. Organic solar cells are light, flexible, semi-transparent, and more environmentally-friendly than traditional inorganic based cells. These properties open up possibilities for exciting new applications, including building integration and portable solar power. Successful completion of this project will produce highly trained personnel with a broad education in chemistry and materials science, and scientifically lead to improvements in the performance and reliability of organic solar cells, bringing this technology one step closer to wide spread commercialization.