South Korean researchers develop 19%-efficient stretchable organic PV cells

The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) says its new organic PV cells are suitable for wearable electronics. KAIST claims that the cells can be stretched by up to 40%.

Image: KAIST

Share

KAIST researchers said in a recent statement that they have developed the world’s highest-performing stretchable solar cells. They can be stretched up to 40% during operation, with a conversion efficiency of 19%.

“The team conjugated a highly stretchable polymer to an electrically conductive polymer with excellent electrical properties through chemical bonding and developed a new conductive polymer with electrical conductivity and mechanical stretchability,” the researchers said. “It meets the highest reported level of photovoltaic conversion efficiency (19%) using organic solar cells while also showing ten times the stretchability of existing devices.”

The researchers said that the advancement could affect the expanding market for wearable electric devices, where stretchable cells are gaining attention. However, the scientists face challenges in creating photoactive layers with both high electrical performance and mechanical elasticity.

They presented the tech in “Rigid and Soft Block-Copolymerized Conjugated Polymers Enable High-Performance Intrinsically-Stretchable Organic Solar Cells,” which was recently published on Joule. The tech was developed with conjugated polymer donors (PDs) consisting of electroactive rigid and soft blocks.

Popular content

“We use rigid D18 and soft PEHDT blocks to synthesize block-copolymerized PDs (D180.8-s-PEHDT0.2), which offer high electrical properties and mechanical stretchability,” the scientists said. “The D180.8-s-PEHDT0.2-organic solar cells (OSCs) excel beyond their D18- and PEHDT-based OSC counterparts by overcoming the traditional power conversion efficiency-stretchability trade-off.”

The research team was led by Prof. Bumjoon Kim from KAIST’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.

“Through this research, we not only developed the world’s best performing stretchable organic solar cell, but it is also significant that we developed a new polymer that can be applicable as a base material for various electronic devices that need to be malleable and/or elastic,” said Kim.

This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.