Metallopolyyne polymers as new functional materials for solar cell applications

The need to develop inexpensive renewable energy sources stimulates intensive scientific research for efficient, low-cost, lightweight photovoltaic devices. The organic polymer-based photovoltaic elements have offered the potential of obtaining cheap and fabrication-easy methods to harvest energy from sunlight as compared to the inorganic semiconductors. Encouraging progress has been made over the past few years in the field of photovoltaic solar cells using organic polymers. One attractive alternative is the development of photovoltaic and solar cells that are based on the exploitation of strongly absorbing metallopolyynes of platinum as the electron donors coupled with electron-accepting methanofullerene in bulk heterojunction devices. We predict that these conjugated organometallic congeners will make important contributions to identify environmental-friendly hi-tech solutions of the energy problem. In this presentation, we report some functional organometallic materials and polymers containing various donor-acceptor units. Such a study will act as a stepping stone to synthetic chemists working on the design of new functional materials for photovoltaic and solar cell applications.