Abstract

Organic and hybrid organic/inorganic systems are promising for solar cell device optimisation owing to a vast library of materials, which are available at potentially low-costs. Our group has recently demonstrated high performance meso-superstructured solar cells utilizing a novel organic-inorganic mixed halide perovskite structure as the light harvesting antenna and charge generation centre on a TiO2 and insulating Al2O3 mesoporous scaffold (Lee et al., Science 2012, 338, 643). I will present recent spectroscopic and device results on this system. In particular, I will focus on an architecture where we co-functionalise the metal oxide scaffold with an organic surface adsorbed fullerene (C60-SAM), and use a semiconducting polymer hole-conductor. This establishes a highly tuneable route forward for ‘dual absorbing’ polymer-perovskite hybrid photovoltaics. Finally, I will present two methods in which we manipulate the binding of multiple semiconducting polymers to carbon nanotubes to produce new and novel nanostructures which show promise for use in organic solar cells.