| Project Detail |
Experimentation for organic photovoltaic energy system optimisation
The expansion and growth of the Internet of things have generated heightened interest in various innovative technologies, including autonomous off-grid energy harvesters such as organic photovoltaics (OPVs). These OPVs are typically suitable for indoor energy sources like artificial lights within interiors. With the support of the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions programme, the HOPES project aims to leverage advancements in the OPV sector, such as increased power conversion efficiency (PCE), to establish a methodology for high-throughput experimentation on OPVs using a standalone controllable light source. Through this experimental process, researchers will study materials and rapidly achieve the highest possible PCE for indoor OPVs. Ultimately, the project will enhance the researchers’ expertise.
Recently, the growing popularity of internet of things (IoT) applications has garnered substantial interest in autonomous off-grid energy harvesters such as organic photovoltaics (OPVs) from indoor-available energy sources namely artificial lights. The success of IoT will rely on avoiding battery maintenance for the billions of sensors postulated to be deployed, using available renewable energy at deployment for powering the sensors. The discovery of novel organic materials and diverse device strategies led to a big leap in the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of OPVs up to 31% under indoor lights. Despite the augmented usefulness of indoor OPVs with record performance, several challenges thus far need to be attempted. The High-throughput optimization for indoor Organic Photovoltaic Energy Systems (HOPES) project introduces a novel concept of combining advanced high-throughput experimentation techniques with a standalone tunable light source. HOPES is interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary and includes the development of highly efficient indoor OPVs along with the scale-up property that is, integration of IoT devices with the high-performance OPV. In HOPES, the researcher will implement a computer-controlled light emitting source to achieve a desirable light spectrum by exploring a large library of illumination spectra. This will lead to achieving the highest possible PCE (> 40%) for a given OPV system. The traditional experimental techniques cannot meet the recent progress of indoor OPVs owing to their limitations of time and workforce. Thus, HOPES will explore a variety of materials at an unbeaten pace by combinatorial screening to reach the highest PCE in indoor OPVs. The researcher’s experience with the indoor OPVs will be combined with the host supervisor’s expertise in high-throughput experimentation to successfully implement HOPES. The advanced training gained during HOPES implementation will contribute to excelling the researchers professional career. |
