The network EUROMAP will contribute to the development in the field of efficient, low cost organic photovoltaic elements with conjugated polymers possessing semiconducting properties as an absorber. The inherent advantage of using conjugated polymers  for  organic  photovoltaic  devices  is  based  on  the possibility  to  use  well  developed polymer processing  technologies. Therefore in this project it is proposed a new approach for solar cells fabrication, in which the role of the photoactive layer will be played by a low bandgap polymer i.e. a conjugated polymer with a bandgap around 1.5eV.
The utilisation of conjugated polymers in the solar cell's active layer is based on the phenomenon of photoinduced electron transfer first discovered in the polymer/ fullerene composites. Most of the activities in the field after this discovery are devoted to the wide-gap polymers, mainly poly-(phenylene-vinylene) PPV with the semiconducting gap of about 2.5eV and C60 as an acceptor molecule. Typical values of power efficiency achieved are about 1%. Basic principles of photovoltaics, however, require a better matching of optical gap of the absorbers used in the cell to the solar irradiation spectrum (A 1.5 spectrum). This means that the semiconductors with the gap around 1.5eV can deliver higher energy conversion efficiencies.
The production of a cost efficient photovoltaic elements is expected to have a major impact on the socio-economic environment due to CO2 reduction. Further, a promising class of electroactive working materials  will be investigated within this project and will contribute to the technological development of novel devices.

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