Our planet is facing critical environmental concerns caused by the effects of fossil fuels combustion. Therefore, there is an urgent need for the deployment of renewable energies to tackle global warming. Among the different options, solar energy gains much relevance considering that Earth receives an estimated 4.3 × 1020 J of energy per hour.

Nowadays the prevailing photovoltaic technology is based on inorganic semiconductors, mainly represented by silicon solar cells. Nevertheless, this well settled technology still has an unsolved problem, because these semiconductors cannot absorb the whole solar spectrum and near-infrared (NIR) photons are lost, with the subsequent effect on the power conversion efficiency.

Organic Semiconductors

Organic semiconductors have the great advantage of admitting the fine tuning of the physical and chemical properties through synthetic methods. In this regard, this proposal aims at the synthesis of conjugated polymers and small molecules (related the area of non-fullerene acceptors) with a narrow bandgap that leads to an optimum absorption in the NIR region.

The wide background of the candidate and the host group in the preparation of conjugated systems will enable the design and synthesis of innovative building blocks that fulfill the requirements for NIR light absorption. Focusing in the use of unprecedented four-coordinate boron complexes as well as in the strategy of desymmetrization of donor-acceptor conjugated molecules we are confident that the proposed organic materials will contribute to the progress of NIR-active organic semiconductors (a detailed description of these molecules is provided in the research project).

Organic Solar Cells

These novel materials will be used for the fabrication of organic solar cells in combination with other commercially available materials. The photovoltaic devices will be optimized and characterized to verify the performance of the materials synthesized in this project.

Organic solar cells which can efficiently transform the sunlight energy from the NIR region into electricity can become a complementary photovoltaic technology of interest for industry.