Summary

The PHaSE Energy Frontier Research Center has included work from over twenty faculty at multiple universities and national research laboratories, aimed at finding the fundamental underpinnings of photovoltaic power conversion in organic-based solar cells. The PHaSE center made major findings in areas of in operando morphology evolution during organic solar cell fabrication, interlayer adjustment of active layer to electrode work function control for better power conversion, environmentally transformational strategies for processing organic electronic materials into pre-fabricated nanoparticles for generalized bulk heterojunction fabrication, among many other discoveries. By 2015, PHaSE power conversion in single junction research-quality solar cells topped 10%, a world-class level of achievement.

PHaSE EFRC work was featured in an MRS-TV video production, UMASS Amherst -- Optimal Design: Interdisciplinary Teamwork from Synthesis to Production, that was highlighted on electronic signage throughout the Fall 2014 Boston Materials Research Society meeting. Major vignettes were shown from Maroudas group, DV group, Emrick group. Both faculty and undergraduates/graduates/postdocs described EFRC work and work being carried out by closely allied groups interested in energy-related materials research on campus. The MRS produced the video, with support by PHaSE and the UMass Colleges of Natural Sciences and of Engineering.

Check out the short (5 min) You Tube version of that video that was used at the MRS meeting!

Although original federal funding used to create the PHaSE center ended on 30 April 2015, the research that developed fromthat support continues strongly at UMass Amherst and in associated ongoing collaborations forged during 2009-2015. The work is exciting, fundamental to understanding organic electronic materials, and critical to applied development of such materials in the marketplace.

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Last update: April 26, 2015