October 23, 2015
Small Device, Big Impact: On the Future of Solar Energy
With the high cost of producing and installing crystalline silicon solar panels making solar energy inaccessible to most of the earth's population, it's time to come up with a low cost, high efficiency alternative. The answer: organic solar cells. The Arango Lab focuses on third generation energy cascade devices, examining both new organic materials as well as methods of deposition of said materials. Located at Mount Holyoke College, the lab is the only solar cell research lab at a small liberal arts college. The lab’s research is competitive with large research labs at leading research universities. My primary aim this summer was to investigate the implementation of the organic small molecule Spiro-meOTAD as a hole transport layer in order to decrease the leakage of reverse bias current.
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