A REVIEW OF THE ADVANCEMENTS OF ORGANIC SOLAR CELL TECHNOLOGY AND ITS INTEGRATION INTO PHOTOVOLTAIC APPLICATIONS

Organic solar cells provide benefits like transparent, cost-effective processing, and customizable light absorption properties. This review discusses challenges and recent strategies to improve the Power conversion efficiency of organic solar cells, such as bandgap tuning, molecular orbital alignment, active layer morphologies engineering, electron-donating and withdrawing group incorporation, side chain length engineering, the third additive insertion, and controlling of solubility of materials. The good transparency of organic solar cells makes them ideal for Greenhouse Integrated photovoltaic applications, which has been evaluated in this review. Explored strategies significantly impact performance parameters, such as optoelectronic properties, absorption spectrum, open circuit voltage, exciton dissociation, charge transport, molecular packing, solubility, phase separation, crystallinity, and nanoscale morphology, and device stability. An optimized organic solar cell is beneficial for specific applications. As the Near Infrared portion of the solar spectrum offers significant potential for maximizing the performance of organic solar cells, future research should focus on developing stable Near Infrared active materials. This advancement will enhance the efficiency of organic solar cells. While organic solar cells have achieved notable power conversion efficiency, long-term stability remains a significant challenge. When integrating organic solar cells with greenhouses, they must withstand harsh environmental conditions often found at agricultural sites, such as high temperatures, humidity, air, dust, and light. Ensuring stability under these conditions is crucial for the market penetration and widespread adoption of this technology.