Keith Lupton with Kenneth Singer and Anna Sobolewska

Near Field Imaging of Charge in Bulk Heterojunction Photovoltaic Materials

Solar Energy is by far the most plentiful source of energy in the world.  Unlike fossil fuels, solar energy both can’t be depleted on Earth and doesn’t produce the negative externalities that effect our environment.  The need to produce an affordable, efficient, and durable mechanism to capture this energy is needed more than ever.  My research will be focusing on organic polymer based solar cells.  I will be investigating the charge and electric field distribution in the bulk heterojunctions of these polymers using Second Harmonic Generation (SHG) in Near Field Scanning Optical Microscopy (NSOM) as the imaging technique.  These images will provide visual electrical information in order to study both bulk heterojunction morphology and electronic properties. By getting a better understanding of these properties, atomic scale and processing adjustments can be made to increase their photon to electricity conversion efficiency.