CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

As the world is faced with the issues of ever-decreasing fossil fuel and ever increasing environmental crises resulting from greenhouse gas production, photovoltaic (PV) technology has become a main focus of attention. The success of any PV technology depends on its efficiency, lifetime and cost.

Silicon-based solar cells (a type of IPV) have high efficiencies. However, the high cost to efficiency ratio of silicon-based solar cells and their complex production process has generated interest in developing alternative PV cells such as organic photovoltaics (OPVs). The obvious difference between IPVs and OPVs in terms of their photo-conversion mechanisms (Fig. 1.1) is that light absorption in OPV cells leads to the production of exciton mobile excited states while in IPVs, it leads directly to the creation of free electron-hole pairs.

Figure 1.1: Illustration on the difference between organic and inorganic solar cells when considering the photo-conversion process.

Despite the fact that OPVs have lower efficiencies, developing high performance organic photovoltaic devices as sources of sustainable energy has been an important issue in research conducted worldwide in recent years due to the low manufacturing cost of the devices and their use in the fabrication of flexible devices. In the last decade, the performance of OPVs has improved steadily, reaching a power conversion efficiency (PCE) as high as 7% [1]. It is the rest PV technology capable of generating electricity at a cost on par with conventional fuels, making it a cost-effective renewable energy source without government subsidies. Although, there are other possible applications, the most common and promising application of OPV technology are in organic solar cells (OSCs).

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