Polyer Electronics: Power from Polymers

摘要

The energy crisis, global warming and a need for renewable energy sources have given rise to a massive interest in the research community to address these issues. For example, the Department of Energy has launched over forty Energy Frontier Research Centers and several Energy Hubs, while the National Science Foundation has had several calls for major research efforts that address the energy problem the world is facing. While polymer-based devices will certainly not be the end-all solution to these problems, they will have their place, taking advantage of the flexibility, processability and low cost of polymeric materials. Organic small molecule and polymerbased electronics have been at the center of research over the past few decades with the ultimate objective of developing inexpensive, flexible devices. More recently, much of the research that has focused on organic and polymer-based light-emitting materials has shifted into the photovoltaic arena. Very roughly speaking, photovoltaic devices are the opposite of light-emitting devices. In the latter case, a voltage is applied to a material to produce light, whereas in the former case, light is absorbed by a material to generate electric current. Polymer-based photovoltaic devices have emerged as a central focus in this drive to produce inexpensive energy sources.