Lead-binding biogenic polyelectrolyte multilayer coating for lead retention in perovskite solar cells.

Perovskite solar cells promise to deliver high efficiencies at low manufacturing costs. Yet on their way towards commercialization, they have to face the associated risk of potential lead leakage into the environment after damage to the cell's encapsulation. Here we present a new approach to generate a lead binding coating, based on a layer-by-layer deposition of biopolymers.

Carbon Nanodots: Supramolecular Electron Donor-Acceptor Hybrids Featuring Perylenediimides.

We describe the formation of charge-transfer complexes that feature electron-donating carbon nanodots (CND) and electron-accepting perylenediimides (PDI). The functionalities of PDIs have been selected to complement those of CNDs in terms of electrostatic and π-stacking interactions based on oppositely charged ionic head groups and extended π-systems, respectively. Importantly, the contributions from electrostatic interactions were confirmed in reference experiments, in which stronger interactions were found for PDIs that feature positively rather than negatively charged head groups.

Dithienopyrrole-based oligothiophenes for solution-processed organic solar cells.

Isomeric dicyanovinylene-terminated oligothiophenes 1 and 2 comprising a central dithienopyrrole (DTP) unit have been developed for solution-processed small molecule organic solar cells (SMOSCs) giving the highest power conversion efficiency of 4.8% for DTP-based oligomeric materials.