Hi all,

Just sharing this for all who might had this question, as I did:
As you can read below, this appeared when I saw that the compound with the greatest efficiency on this project's website only has an efficiency of around 11%, so I though, "Already avaiable panels already have efficiencies greater than 15%, and there were already developed panels with efficiencies greater than 40%."

ORIGINAL MESSAGE
Hi,
I'm a boinc user, and I already spent some of my computer time for this project.

However, I got curious.
I logged in your site and visited the compound database you have, which presents the eletric conversion efficiency, etc, and it seems the compound with the highest value that is on your database is around 11%.

Well, there are already more efficient solar panels, around 15%, if I'm not in mistake, and I saw that the best efficiency achieved in solar panels is around 43%, which is much more than what your compound have achieved, that's even less than the efficiency on the market.

So, what would you reply to this?,
Did I miss something, or is there really some expected result, or are we simply calculating compound characteristics (whose compound may not be of use)?

Thanks in advance

REPLY FROM THE PROJECT STAFF

Hi

The limit that you are (correctly) seeing in the database is due to the model which we use to predict PCE. We tend to suggest that these values are indicative of potential (i.e. see them as pointers to the good molecules, not necesserily absolute values). This is because the model assumes a particular cell architecture (bulk heterojuction) and these cells are not the ones you see with the high efficiency values, which tend to be so called tandem solar cells. However, we are just working on a new calibration scheme which will allow us to relate the calculated values more closely to the architecture, and so will be able to point to molecules which would be good in different settings.

FYI 43% efficient cells are not OPVs - which this project focusses on - they are inorganic cells. These have their own downsides, many of which are alleviated by OPVs, and so the challenge is to get sufficiently efficient OPVs to take the place of these inorganic cells.

I hope that answers your question

Your Harvard CEP Team