Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumResearchers make organic solar cells immune to the ravages of water, air and light
https://engineering.nyu.edu/news/researchers-make-organic-solar-cells-immune-ravages-water-air-and-lightResearchers make organic solar cells immune to the ravages of water, air and light
Posted: May 1, 2019
BROOKLYN, New York, Wednesday, May 1, 2019 The market for organic solar cells is expected to grow more than 20% between 2017 and 2020, driven by advantages over traditional silicon solar cells: they can be mass produced at scale using roll-to-roll processing; the materials comprising them can be easily found in the earth and could be applied to solar cells through green chemistry; they can be semitransparent and therefore less visually intrusive meaning they can be mounted on windows or screens and are ideal for mobile devices; they are ultra-flexible and can stretch; and they can be ultra-lightweight.
Unlike silicon solar cells, however, organic cells are highly vulnerable to moisture, oxygen and sunlight itself. State-of-the-art remediation involves incapsulating the cell, which adds to production cost and unit weight, while reducing efficiency.
Researchers at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering have discovered a remarkable means of making organic solar panels more robust, including conferring resistance to oxygen, water and light by doing the opposite: removing, not adding, material.
The team, led by André Taylor, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, and including Jaemin Kong, a post-doctoral researcher at NYU, and researchers at Yale Universitys Transformative Materials and Devices lab, performed the molecular equivalent of hair removal by waxing: they employed an adhesive tape to strip the electron-accepting molecules the conjugated fullerene derivative Phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) from the topmost surface of the photoactive layer of the solar cell, leaving only non-reactive organic polymers exposed. One of the major culprits in device degradation is the oxidation of these fullerene derivatives. Removing PCBM from the exposed film surface reduces the chance of encounters with oxidation sources such as oxygen molecules and water, the latter being especially damaging to PCBM.
Chin music
(23,002 posts)just as the gop was ruining the country forever. The gop needs to be listed as a terrorist organization. they have ZERO qualms about disturbing the peace and scofflaw'ing it everyday. Sigh. We'd be SO much further ahead if Pres Clinton took her spot.
Trump wants two years replaced? We want Hillaries 8. keep it up loudmouth.
OKIsItJustMe
(19,937 posts)https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/november-8-1977-address-nation-energy
I hope that, perhaps a hundred years from now, the change to inexhaustible energy sources will have been made, and our Nation's concern about energy will be over. But we can make that transition smoothlyfor our country and for our children and for our grandchildrenonly if we take careful steps now to prepare ourselves for the future.
Chin music
(23,002 posts)I'd like to hear more from Jimbo. God I miss Ted Kennedy, John Jr., JFK. Bobby. What a wonderful world it would've been.
OKIsItJustMe
(19,937 posts)GRANDMAMA: We met at eight
HONOR: I was on time
GRANDMAMA: No, you were late
HONOR: Ah yes, I remember it well
We dined with friends
GRANDMAMA: We dined alone
HONOR: A tenor sang
GRANDMAMA: A baritone
HONOR:I remember it well
NNadir
(33,456 posts)...but the fact is that the solar fantasy simply didn't work, doesn't work and won't work.
All the bullshit repetition of lab scale "breakthroughs" over decades and decades have done nothing at all..
Trillions of dollars have been squandered on this unsustainable mass intensive and environmentally worthless "solar will save us" scheme since Reagan died, and we're at 415 ppm of CO2.
Beat the ghost to death, if you wish, but the laws of physics have a lot more to do with this than a senile old boogeyman in the White House in the 1980's.
If people really gave a shit about their Grandchildren and their children they wouldn't be dumping, with contempt, the responsibility to do "by 2050" what they have been unable and unwilling to do themselves.
It is obscene to talk about one's grandchildren in this context, since this big lie is abandoning their future.
NNadir
(33,456 posts)...and chlorobenzene.
From the open sourced supplementary information from the paper, if they were willing to give enough of a fuck to really dump this stuff on future generations:
ACS Energy Lett., 2019, 4, pp 10341041, supplementary information:
It's um "organic..."
Device fabrication: Indium tin oxide (ITO) (L × W × thickness = 1.5 cm × 1.0 cm × 100 nm) sputtered glass substrates (L × W × thickness = 1.5 cm × 1.5 cm × 1 mm) were ultra-sonicated in deionized water, acetone and isopropyl alcohol for 10 minutes, respectively, and were stored in a drying oven at 100 °C before being used. The ZnO layer was deposited by spin coating the ZnO sol-gel precursor solution onto the cleaned substrates at 5000 rpm for 30 seconds and then the ZnO coated substrates were dried at 150 °C on a hot plate for 30 min in air to form a 20-nm thick electron transporting layer. After the drying, the ZnO coated substrates were transferred into a N2-filled glove box. The photoactive layers were formed on the ZnO coated substrates by spincoating...
the photoactive blending solutions. Spinning rates of the spin coater are 800 rpm and 1500 rpm for P3HT: PCBM and PBDB-T: IT-M, respectively. And then the active layer coated substrates were put onto a hotplate at 140 °C for 10 minutes. After coating the photoactive layers, vanadium oxide layer was coated on the photoactive layer (3000 rpm for 30 s) in air. Then, the substrates were moved to hot plate to dry the vanadium oxide layer at 80 °C for 10 min. To have the surface PCBM removed blend film, a rubber roller was used. After the thermal annealing in N2 glove box, the blend film coated substrates were moved out to air and the adhesive tape (model #: S-9782) was placed onto the blend film surface. The tape attached substrates were moved onto the hotplate set for 100 °C, and were softly pressed by rolling a rubber roller 5 times back and forth (~500 Pa). For the PBDB-T: IT-M, much less pressure was exerted onto the substrate (~200 Pa). Then, the substrates were moved out to a working bench to cool down the substrates for 10 min. After cooling down the substrates, the tapes attached onto the surface of the blend films were gently removed. After removal of the tape, vanadium oxide layer was formed in the same way as aforementioned. Finally, silver electrodes were deposited using a thermal evaporator at ~5×10-7 Torr. For the PBDB-T: IT-M solar cell, MoO3 (5 nm) layer was deposited prior to the silver electrode in the same vacuum chamber. A patterned shadow mask was used to define the top electrode area. The device active area was determined by the intersectional area of the bottom ITO and the top silver electrode, which is 1.8 mm2. For the electron-only device, the device structure was based on ITO/ZnO/P3HT: PCBM/ZnO/Al. For the hole-only device, the device structure was based on ITO/PEDOT: PSS/P3HT: PCBM/V2O5/Ag. For the flexible OSCs, ITO sputtered PET substrates (100 ?/sq, 5 mil) which have the same size of the ITO sputtered glass substrates were used with the following device structure: PET/ITO/ZnO/(P3HT : PCBM or PBDB-T: IT-M)/(V2O5 or MoO3)/Ag
.
The full paper is amusing, and can be found here: Underwater Organic Solar Cells via Selective Removal of Electron Acceptors near the Top Electrode (Kim et al ACS Energy Lett., 2019, 4, pp 10341041.)
I've downloaded it in full to remind myself how little we actually care; how willing we're able to embrace a toxic illusion.
I'm sure our grandchildren will be awash in indium tin oxide, vanadium oxide, aluminum and molybdenum trioxide for their "green" "organic" solar cells, or maybe not.
Maybe they'll hate our guts for screwing them over with our cartoonish delusions.