Organic Solar Cells: Historical developments and challenges

Abstract

Organic Solar Cells (OSCs) represent a recent photovoltaic (PV) technology that uses organic semiconductor materials to convert sunlight into electric energy. OSCs have recently shown significant attention due to their technological advantages of flexibility, light weight, cost effective fabrication and significant improvement in the power conversion efficiency. But the efficiencies of OSCs are still lower than crystal or inorganic silicon solar cells. By studying the photovoltaic properties of organic solar cells it is possible to increase the cells efficiency. If the efficiency can be raises to half of the inorganic solar cell the production cost will be reduced to one-tenth. This paper describes the historical back ground, present situation, future prospectus and technological breakthrough of OSCs. Also explain the long-term sustainability advantages of OSCs with compared to inorganic photovoltaic technologies in terms of energy payback time and CO2 emission.