Developing Organic Photovoltaic Technologies for CubeSats

Abstract

Space technologies play an important role in everyday life. Such roles include, but not exclusive to global positioning system (GPS), telecommunications, surveillance and meteorology. For the past few years, there has been significant interest in satellites known as CubeSats. A CubeSat is a 10x10x10 cm cuboid satellite used for space research. The main goal of building a CubeSat is to enable students to design, build and test a spacecraft, similar to that of the very first spacecraft, Sputnik. Almost all spacecraft is electrically powered using photovoltaics (PV), by means of converting sunlight into electrical power via the photovoltaic effect. Space technologies have been advancing rapidly, yet myriad challenges remain. For photovoltaics, it is of interest to reduce the weight and cost, as well as improving the strength and the way in which they are deployed. One of the emerging PV technologies is organic photovoltaics (OPV). With OPVs, it is possible to fabricate large-area, light-weight and flexible cells with properties advantageous over their inorganic counterparts. These include, high absorption coefficients, mechanical durability and high throughput as they are solution-processable. However, OPV has suffers from stability, efficiency and degradation compared to inorganic. In this thesis, processing conditions to fabricate conventional OPV based on P3HT:PC61BM active layer is optimized. Loss mechanisms in bulk heterojunction OPV is tackled using new novel active layers and interlayers. Experimental results have shown an enhancement in device performance and stability. This works also looks into the possibility of using OPV for space applications intended for low Earth orbit i.e. CubeSats and investigated through a degradation and temperature dependence study. Results indicate that OPV is a promising technology with the ongoing research.

Date of Award	Dec 2017
Original language	American English