Molecular Solar claims record voltage for photovoltaic cells

The company’s most recent advance in the development of organic photovoltaic (OPV) cell technology is the realisation of cells with open-circuit voltages in excess of 4V, which Molecular Solar believes is a record for an OPV device.

This record voltage could see the highly flexible, low-cost solar cells transferred to consumer electronics.

‘If you want to get a high voltage in solar devices, you need to stack lots of these cells on top of each other. What we’ve done is exactly that but we’ve achieved a relatively high voltage for relatively few stacks,’ said Dr Ross Hatton, inventor of the technology and co-founder of the Warwick University spin-out.

Hatton told The Engineer that rather than using a conventional semiconductor such as silicon to harvest the light and transport the electrons, the team instead used highly congregated small molecules made up of various derivatives of phthalocyanines.

The device created by Molecular Solar used four stacks (or junctions) and produced a voltage similar to the highly efficient gallium arsenide solar cells, which Hatton said are relatively expensive in comparison.