Organic polymer breakthrough

Researchers at UC Santa Barbara’s Center for Polymers and Organic Solids (CPOS) claim to have made significant advances in the creation of organic polymers for plastic solar cells.

The team, led by Prof Guillermo Bazan, said that it had reduced the reaction time of the polymers by 99 per cent, from 48 hours to 30 minutes. The researchers claim that this could cut the production time for organic polymers by half.

In addition, the team has increased the average molecular weight of the polymers by a factor of three. According to the researchers, the higher molecular weight could potentially increase the current density of plastic solar cells by a factor of four.

Publishing their findings in Nature Chemistry online, the researchers said that the increase in current density was found to be approximately proportional to the increase in average molecular weight.

The changes have been the result of a number of modifications, including replacing conventional thermal heating with microwave heating, changing the reactant concentrations and varying the ratio by five per cent from the nominal 1:1 stoichiometric ratio normally employed in polymerisation reactions.