Welcome to the Polymer-Based Materials for Harvesting Solar Energy (PHaSE) Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) at UMass Amherst! PHaSE was created with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Basic Energy Sciences, with support from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
The PHaSE energy center carries out fundamental photovoltaic-oriented research using organic-based polymers and related materials to maximize efficiency in the collection and harvesting of energy over a broad frequency range of the solar spectrum. The center’s strongly-networked, interdisciplinary teams of researchers seek ways to minimize charge-quenching exciton recombination, to maximize electron transport across inorganic/organic interfaces, and to optimize design and fabrication strategies for making inexpensive photovoltaic devices.
The challenges are exemplified by relatively "flat" trend in published power-conversion efficiencies (PCE's) in the much-researched P3HT-PCBM based solar cells over 2002-2010, despite reports of increasing PCE using related but different fabrications (see Figure 1 in a report by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory).
The center brings together seventeen UMass Amherst researchers from four departments, plus collaborators from other universities, companies, and government laboratories.
We hope that you will visit these pages to check on news, publications, and progress of the participants as the work moves forward. Feel free to contact us with any questions! |
Briseno et al. describe use of crystallization of their controlled size oligothiophenes (up to 12-mer) on highly ordered pyrolytic graphite in a perspective published in Materials Today. Crystalline organization and charge transport are influenced by crystallization on the surface, by comparison to the bulk phase behavior. The work is part of Briseno group's efforts to induce new crystal phases in conjugated organics, to probe variation in the electronic properties as a function of packing and crystallite formation. ***
