Organic solar cells have the potential to become an environmental friendly, inexpensive, large area and flexible photovoltaics technology. Their main advantages are low process temperatures, the potential for very low cost due to abundant materials and scalable processing, and the possibility of producing flexible devices on plastic substrates. To improve their commercialization capacity and to complement other renewable energy technologies, the performance of state-of-the-art organic solar cells needs to be further improved.
Our goals within ITN SEPOMO – Spins in Efficient Photovoltaic devices based on Organic Molecules – have been to bring the performance of organic solar cells forward by taking advantage of the so far unexplored degree of freedom of photogenerated species in organic materials, their spin. This challenging idea has provided a unified platform for the recruitment and training of 16 talented Early Stage Researchers for a career in science and technology and to promote the world-wide position of Europe in the field of organic photovoltaics and electronics. Our scientific objectives have been to develop several novel routes to enhance the efficiency of organic solar cells by understanding and exploiting the electronic spin interactions.