UCF secures $7.5 million research grant to improve hybrid photovoltaic solar cells

The 5-year grant will fund research which could lead to ways to produce highly flexible solar panels

The University of Central Florida has been awarded a $7.5 million research grant to study ways to make photovoltaic solar cells more efficient in capturing and converting solar energy into electricity and less costly to manufacture.

The research can lead to ways to produce highly flexible solar panels, which could be manufactured in larger quantities and used to support a variety of solar products, spanning from solar roof shingles to portable energy.

The grant, from New York-based Prime Source Initiative, Inc., will be awarded in $1.5 million allotments per year for five years.

The research will be led by Winston Schoenfeld, a professor in CREOL, The College of Optics and Photonics at UCF. He will work on methods to increase the efficiency between the organic material that harvests the sun's energy and the inorganic semiconductor nanostructures within a hybrid photovoltaic solar cell.

"All-organic solar cells are effective at absorbing light and collecting energy from the sun, but they aren't efficient at converting this into electricity," Schoenfeld explained.

Hybrid solar cells use an inorganic semiconductor (such as silicon) to increase electric output. But how to efficiently and economically integrate the organic and the inorganic components of the hybrid solar cell is a challenge and hasn't been widely studied.

Schoenfeld will develop the inorganic, nanostructured semiconductor backbone of the solar cell. The project's co-researcher, Andre Gesquiere, a professor in UCF's Nanotechnology Science Center and the Chemistry Department, will lead the organic, polymer research components of the project.

"Once the light is absorbed in the polymer, excitons are created that must be separated. If you don't separate them, they'll just recombine and you lose that energy," Schoenfeld said. "So we are using inorganic nanostructures that act as 'transport highways' to allow an efficient way for excitons to be separated and transferred into electricity."