After 150 million theoretical calculations, scientists at Harvard University in the US reveal results that could cut down the time and cost of experimental tests to find better organic electronic materials for solar cells.
Most solar cells are made from expensive inorganic materials. Solar cells from organic materials are a cheaper alternative and scientists have been working to find designs that are as efficient as their inorganic counterparts. However, new organic solar cell materials must be built and tested before scientists can decide whether the idea is an improvement.
The Harvard Clean Energy Project (CEP) team led by Alán Aspuru-Guzik is using the predictive power of computers to speed up this process. Analogous to the modern drug discovery process, where large numbers of molecules can be virtually screened taking only the most biologically active ones forward into development and trials, Aspuru-Guzik’s group screened 2.3 million molecular structures to find ones that had the best properties for solar cells.
Interested to know more? Read the full news article by Rowan Frame in Chemistry World here…
Read the article by J Hachmann et al. in EES:
Lead candidates for high-performance organic photovoltaics from high-throughput quantum chemistry – the Harvard Clean Energy Project
Stuart Licht, Baochen Cui, Jessica Stuart, Baohui Wang and Jason Lau
Energy Environ. Sci., 2013, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C3EE42654H, Paper
