Experimental Physics VI

17th January 2012:

A paper on "Electrically driven photon antibunching from a single molecule at room temperature", featuring Prof. Jens Pflaum as coauthor, was just published in Nature Communications.

12th December 2011:

Our PhD student Nadine Wolf received one of the Wilhelm-Conrad-Röntgen Studienpreis 2011 Awards for excellent achievements concerning their diploma thesis. Congratulations!

14th September 2011:

Our paper on printed paper photovoltaics (3PV) was published online in Advanced Energy Materials as collaboration with the group of Prof. Hübler, Technical University Chemnitz. The polymer-fullerene solar cells were printed on paper using a combination of gravure and flexographic printing techniques. The printed paper photovoltaic cells are free from expensive electrodes made with indium tin oxide, silver, or gold. Oxidized zinc film is used as the electron-collecting layer.

13th July 2011:

Hannes Kraus and Andreas Sperlich recently won the Energy & Environmental Science Poster Prize with their work on angle dependent magnetic resonance spectroscopy.

5th July 2011:

Our 2010 review article on Polymer-fullerene bulk heterojunction solar cells is one of the most popular articles of Reports on Progress in Physics.

19th May 2011:

Dr. Carsten Deibel presented his concluding Habilitation talk titled: Fukushima - Origin and Consequences from a Physical Perspective.

16th May:

Recently, our investigation of trap states in three methanofullerenes was published by Advanced Energy Materials (Schafferhans et al. (2011)). Thermally stimulated current measurements revealed significant differences in their trap distributions, with impact on the performance of organic solar cells.

In another publication (Liedtke et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc. (2011)) we investigated organic solar cells containing the trimetallic nitride endohedral fullerene Lu3N@C80-PCBEH, an acceptor leading to a high open circuit voltage. We found that intramolecular charge transfer along with electron back transfer to the triplet state in Lu3N@C80-PCBEH are loss mechanisms responsible for a reduced photocurrent.

11th January and 16th March 2011:

Recently, again two of our contributions to organic solar cell research where accepted for publication in high ranking international journals.

In one work (Strobel et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 266602 (2010)) we used Monte Carlo simulations to understand the role of the diffusion of polaron pairs in donor acceptor bulk heterojunctions. We found that the extraction of these bound polaron pairs at the electrodes is an important loss factor limiting the efficiency of organic optoelectronic and photovoltaic devices.

In a second work, published online by Adv. Funct. Mater. (Baumann et al. (2011)), we investigated the recombination dynamics in organic solar cells based on pBTCT-C12:PCBM in 1:1 and 1:4 ratio. This work is novel in as far as a combination of a local probe technique (microwave conductivity) with a charge extraction experiment is unique, and as the experimental findings can be generalized to other polymer:fullerene blend systems allowing for phase segregation as well.

17th September 2010:

The International Cluster Conference on Organic Photovoltaics, organised by Bayern Innovativ in cooperation with ZAE Bayern, was held on 16th September 2010 in Würzburg: with 270 attendees from 11 countries, it was a success. Several world-reknown experts presented their view on a range of topics from materials, devices and simulation to production and stability aspects. The conference was concluded by a panel discussion on the prospects of organic photovoltaics. The conference will be established as annual event in Würzburg, taking place next time on 22nd September 2011.

6th September 2010:

In the second round of proposals of the DFG priority programme SPP1355, we won four of the about 16 granted projects Germany-wide. This success proves and further strengthens the position of our Würzburg-based research in the field of organic semiconductors for applications as photovoltaics devices.

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