C. Daniel Frisbie Group
Chemical Engineering & Materials Science
University of Minnesota - Twin Cities 		Films & Interfaces,
Molecular Crystals,
Molecular Electronics,
Organic Semiconductors,
Scanning Probe Microscopy

Bryan_Boudouris Bryan Boudouris
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign; 2004
B.S. Chemical Engineering
 Email: boudo019@umn.edu

Organic Photovoltaics

As traditional fossil fuels become more difficult and expensive to mine and as the public looks towards more environmentally friendly energy sources for the future, the need to explore alternative sources of power becomes critical. While many different "green" energy sources (such as hydrodynamic and wind power) are being explored, solar energy is particularly attractive because the energy lends itself to portability, quiet operating conditions, and is more environmentally friendly than other green technologies in terms of land usage and ecological impact. Silicon solar cells were first developed in the 1950's and the cells have had progress to this date but are still only between 15 and 20% efficient while still carrying a high cost of production, installation, and operation. While efficiencies may tend to increase in the inorganic solar cell regime, the cost of manufacturing high-purity devices in vacuum chambers will make commercial production of these cells quite difficult. In response to this fact, researchers have turned toward other methods of light capture and storage.

The principle which governs energy conversion in a solar cell is the generation of a charge carrier pair by absorption of a photon. This charge carrier pair consists of an electron and a hole that tend to recombine due to the low dielectric constant inherent to organic photovoltaic cells. In order to ensure that a great enough percentage of carrier pairs are generated per amount of incident light, conjugated polymers are required in the photovoltaic cell. Published results have shown that in a conjugated polymer/fullerene system charge separation can occur and remain stable on time scales much larger than that required for current generation.

The purpose of my research will be to improve efficiencies of organic solar cells in order to make the technology commercially competitive with traditional energy sources in certain applications. Some of the most recently reported solar efficiencies for OPV cells were approximately 5%. If efficiencies of plastic solar cells reached that of silicon solar cells, the technology would almost certainly be accepted immediately due to the low production cost of plastic solar cells. Given the fact that there is a large interest in electronic polymers in industry for various applications, organic photovoltaic cells could easily be processed from well-known solution deposition techniques at low temperatures. In order to increase photovoltaic efficiency, my research will focus on improvement of technology in the fields of light collecting techniques and charge transport processes. Once these fundamental principles have been tackled, development of sound device engineering design and techniques may be explored. If successful bench-level devices are generated, further industrial fabrication may occur from an economically and environmentally profitable point of view.

Publications

“Nanoporous Poly(3-alkylthiophene) Thin Films Generated from Block Copolymer Templates.” Boudouris, B. W.; Frisbie, C. D.; Hillmyer, M. A. Macromolecules, 2008, 41(1), 67 – 75. DOI: 10.1021/ma07162d.

“Intramolecular Exciton Relaxation and Migration Dynamics in Poly(3-hexylthiophene).” Wells, N. P.; Boudouris, B. W.; Hillmyer, M. A.; Blank, D. A. J. Phys. Chem. C, 2007, 111(42), 15404 – 15414. DOI: 10.1021/jp074657j.

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