How Far Can Polymer Solar Cells Go? In Need of a Synergistic Approach

The photovoltaic effect in organic materials is an interesting research area because it offers fundamental knowledge, waiting to be explored, and the potential to offer low-cost technology to replace traditional inorganic solar cells. Worldwide research effort in this area is largely motivated by the desire to develop a new technology platform to cost-effectively harvest solar energy. Currently, researchers from different disciplines are focusing on developing new materials, performing physical studies to gain basic understanding of charge separation and transport mechanisms in these disordered soft material systems, and formulating new device structures and processing conditions in order to push the solar energy conversion efficiency above threshold for commercialization. This Perspective reviews some of the work that has been done over the past 20 years and describes the efforts in materials development to move beyond certain milestones. We emphasize the importance of a synergistic approach in developing new materials to continuously enhance the performance of organic photovoltaic cells.