Folded reflective tandem polymer solar cell doubles efficiency

Conjugated polymers are promising materials for the production of inexpensive and flexible photovoltaic cells. Organic materials display tunable optical absorption within a large spectral range. This enables the construction of organic tandem photovoltaic cells. The authors here demonstrate a reflective tandem cell where single cells are reflecting the nonabsorbed light upon another adjacent cell. By folding two planar but spectrally different cells toward each other, spectral broadening and light trapping are combined to give an enhancement of power conversion efficiency of a factor of 1.8 +/- 0.3. (c) 2007 American Institute of Physics.