Light-absorbing & Redox Conjugated Porous Polymers for only-organic solar batteries
Research project corresponding to the call 2022 and reference CNS2022-135380, for grants for «Consolidación investigadora».
The efficient storage of solar energy will be key in the development of a sustainable and efficient energy system. One of the current strategies is based on the combination of static batteries with photovoltaic cells. However, this approach still has a high cost due to the need to develop materials and devices for two different technologies and suffers from efficiency losses during the energy transfer between the devices. Direct solar energy storage by the alliance of photoelectrochemistry with batteries is a recent strategy with incredible potential to address this challenge.
The ambitious final objective of SolarCPPBat is to develop a Solar Battery composed only by non-toxic, cheap and abundant organic compounds that can be charged using solar energy. In order to operate, a solar battery needs both redox and photoactive materials. This project aims to design bi-functional organic materials that exhibit light-absorbing and redox properties that could be used as the only active materials in a battery. SolarCPPBat has identified Conjugated Porous Polymers (CPPs) as the perfect candidates as they are fully organic materials that, thanks to their tuneability, have the potential to be designed to meet these desired specifications.
