Concentrated sunlight for organic solar cells

Concentrated sunlight provides a novel approach to the study of the physical and electrical parameters of organic solar cells. The study of performance of organic solar cells at high solar concentrations provides insight into the physics, which cannot be studied with conventional solar simulators. A high solar intensity study of inverted P3HT:PCBM solar cells is presented. Performance peak positions were found to be in the range of 1-5 suns, with smaller cells peaking at higher solar concentrations. Additionally, concentrated sunlight is demonstrated as a practical tool for accelerated stability studies of polymers for organic solar cells. Degradation was monitored by the evolution of the UV-vis absorption over time. Varying the solar intensity from 1 to 200 suns, the degradation rates were increased by more than a factor of 100 relative to degradation at 1 simulated sun. 5 different polymers were degraded resulting in acceleration factors in the range of 19-55. This shows that concentrated sunlight can be used as qualitatively to determine the lifetime of polymers under highly accelerated conditions.