An Organic Solar cell or a Plastic Solar Cell is a type of Photovoltic that uses organic electronics and it's a branch of electronic that deals with conductive organic polymers or small organic molecules for light absorption and charge transport to produce electricity from sunlight by photovoltaic effect.
Manufacturers have been using silicon to make solar panels because the material used was most efficient in converting sunlight into electricity. But organic photovoltaics are made from carbon and plastic and it's promising to be a cheaper way of generating electricity. This new research shows that organics can be as efficient as silicon.
As of 2015, over 10% of polymers of solar was archived over the efficiency via a tandem structure. In 2018, 17.3% of organic photovoltaics was reached via tandem structure which broke an efficient record.
Well, organic cells are very strong absorbents of light being able to show harness larger amount of sunlight than any other solar cells. Organic power is now the future of solar technology and it offers limitless possibilities and all the credit goes to it's extraordinary properties.
Organic solar cells has many advantages. Anything that has advantage also has disadvantage. Let's look into some of them;
Advantages of Organic Solar Cells.
Organic solar cells have the ability to utilize greater areas than it's inorganic counterparts. Organic cells can be fabricated using roll-to-roll production process that is less costly than the conventional manufacturing way.
This news breakthrough is solar cell technology has made things easier and portable electronic devices could soon be recharged on the move of low light levels and partial shading like solar panels. Well, this result is an organic solar cell that generate a high voltage sufficient to recharge a Lithium-ion battery directly without the need to connect multiple individual cells in senses.
In different light conditions, elements of these high voltage cells performs well even in areas with low levels of sunlight which makes them ideal for consumer electronic devices.
Disadvantages of Organic Solar Cells.
In order for organic solar cells to match and exceed the performance of silicon-based solar cells, it is necessary for both donor and acceptor materials in an OPV to have good extinction coefficient {referring to several different measures of the absorption of light in a medium}, high stability and good film structure.
Although organic solar cells have higher efficiency than their silicon-based counterparts, their operational lifetime is not as long. It is true that while these cells are still in the development phase, various new materials, processing methods and device architectures having been investigated thoroughly to improve this feature, it is currently their key limitations.