UK breakthrough promises solar and OLED gains

Made from carbon and hydrogen, organic semiconductors are the key components in OLED screens and organic solar cells. It had previously been assumed that charge traps within the semiconductor layer of organic cells were limiting the performance of the devices, but until now the tiny signatures of these traps had not been found. The work is published in Nature Communications.

"For a long time, we guessed that some charges that are generated by the sunlight can be trapped in the semiconductor layer of the solar cell, but we've never really been able to prove it,” said lead author Nasim Zarrabi, a PhD student at Swansea University.

"These traps make solar cells less efficient, photodetectors less sensitive and an OLED TV less bright, so we really need a way to study them and then understand how to avoid them - this is what motivates our work and why these recent findings are so important."