Plastic Solar Cells and Photodetectors: Self-Assembly by Spontaneous Phase Separation

I will summarize recent progress on the performance of solar cells and photodetectors fabricated from semiconducting polymers. We see a clear technology pathway to solar cells with lifetimes and efficiencies required for rooftop applications. Polymer photodetectors, processed from solution and operating at room temperature, exhibit the detectivities greater than 1012 cm Hz1/2/W over the remarkably wide spectral range extending from 300 nm well into the infrared out to 1450 nm with the linear dynamic range larger than 100 dB, demonstrating that the performance of polymer photodetectors is comparable to or even better than that of photodetectors fabricated from any inorganic materials. I will demonstrate that the dream of low cost plastic solar cells and photodetectors is becoming reality.