The Future Shines for Efficient Polymer Solar Cells

摘要

Polymer-based solar cells with a high quantum efficiency have entered the Physics Top Ten at #5. This is the first time a paper on plastic electronics has featured in these physics listings. The results reported in the paper are an important step forward in the development of solar cells with a power conversion rate that would allow a commercial return on the conversion of solar energy to electrical energy.rnIn 1976, Alan Heeger (University of California, Santa Barbara) and the late Alan MacDiarmid discovered conducting polymers and the techniques to dope those polymers over the full range from insulator to conductor. This opened up an exciting new field at the interface between chemistry and condensed-matter physics, most importantly the promise of a new generation of polymers with the electrical properties of metals and semiconductorsrnas well as the processing advantages of plastics. That breakthrough won the polymer scientists a share of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.