High-Performance Organic Photovoltaics

Dear Colleagues,

Organic photovoltaics (OPVs) have shown incredible promise as a next-generation thin-film technology for solar power generation. Unlike traditional inorganic photovoltaics such as silicon, OPVs can be lightweight, flexible, semi-transparent, and low-cost, suitable for applications such as building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPVs), dual-use agrivoltaics, and portable power sources.

In recent years, the power conversion efficiency of OPVs has rapidly increased to exceed 20%, largely contributed to by the advent of non-fullerene acceptors (NFAs). NFAs boast broader absorption ranges into the near-infrared (NIR), higher external quantum efficiency, more efficient charge generation, and lower energy losses compared to traditional fullerene acceptors. Despite the significant progress, there are still outstanding challenges to be overcome before OPVs can realize their full potential, including, but not limited to the following: (1) poor long-term stability, (2) scale-up and module manufacturing, (3) design and synthesis of new narrow-gap acceptors to further extend the absorption into the NIR, (4) lack of low-bandgap donor materials to pair with NFAs, and (5) structure–property relationships of novel donors/acceptors are still not fully understood.

This Special Issue focuses on recent advances in the field of OPVs from all the following perspectives: (1) fundamental understanding of the device physics, (2) novel material design and discovery, (3) device engineering, including manufacturing and scale-up, and (4) various applications, including semi-transparent OPVs, tandem OPVs, photodetectors, etc. We welcome submissions that highlight the great challenges as well as exciting opportunities in the field towards the commercialization of OPV technology.

Dr. Shaun Tan
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• organic photovoltaics
• organic solar cells
• non-fullerene acceptors
• bulk heterojunction
• high efficiency
• semitransparent