Single Material Solar Cells: the Next Frontier for Organic Photovoltaics?

An overview of various approaches for the realization of single-material organic solar cells (SMOCs) is presented. Fullerene-conjugated systems dyads, di-block copolymers, and self-organized donor-acceptor molecules all represent different possible approaches towards SMOCs. Although each of them presents specific advantages and poses specific problems of design and synthesis, these different routes have witnessed significant progress in the past few years and SMOCs with efficiencies in the range of 1.50% have been realized. These performances are already higher than those of bi-component bulk heterojunction solar cells some ten years ago, demonstrating that SMOCs can represent a credible approach towards efficient and simple organic solar cells. Possible directions for future research are discussed with the aim of stimulating further research on this exciting topic.