“I think it’s going to be very important to a lot of different scientific communities.”
In Science, UMass Amherst researchers tell how they broke the ‘electrode barrier’
For decades, polymer scientists and synthetic chemists working to improve the power conversion efficiency of organic solar cells were hampered by the inherent drawbacks of commonly used metal electrodes, including their instability and susceptibility to oxidation. Now for the first time, researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have developed a more efficient, easily processable and lightweight solar cell that can use virtually any metal for the electrode, effectively breaking the “electrode barrier.”
This barrier has been a big problem for a long time, says UMass Amherst’s Thomas Russell, professor of polymer science and engineering. “The sun produces 7,000 times more energy per day than we can use, but we can’t harness it well. One reason is the trade-off between oxidative stability and the work function of the metal cathode.” Work function relates to the level of difficulty electrons face as they transfer from the solar cell’s photoactive layer to the electrode delivering power to a device.
Russell likes to use a lock-and-dam analogy to talk about electron transfer. “People have thought you’d need to use tricks to help electrons, the water in the lock, over an obstacle, the electrode, like a dam. Tricks like sawing the dam apart to allow the flow. But tricks are always messy, introducing a lot of stuff you don’t need,” he says. “The beauty of the solution reached by these synthetic chemists is to just move the dam out of the way, electronically move it so there is no longer a difference in energy level.”
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