Amparo Ruiz Carretero starts her project in organic photovoltaics, financed by the ATRAE program

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Amparo Ruiz Carretero, a researcher at the Madrid Institute of Materials Sciences (ICMM-CSIC), started her new project 'CHIRALGEN' (Chiral Supramolecular Assemblies for the Next Generation of Organic Photovoltaic Materials) this November. This is a project funded through the ATRAE program of the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MICIU) of Spain. The project focuses on creating organic solar cells with a class of compounds called 'chirals': "They are mirror images that cannot be superimposed because they have no plane of symmetry, like a helix; this is what happens with DNA," explains the researcher.

The researcher's goal is "to shed light on how chirality can drive the advancement of organic photovoltaics." To achieve this, Ruiz Carretero will combine her expertise in the synthesis of chiral organic semiconductors with supramolecular mechanistic studies, device fabrication, and spin transport in chiral assemblies.

Ruiz Carretero is launching this project with a team of five people, including three postdoctoral researchers: Marina González Sánchez, an expert in organic synthesis and supramolecular chemistry; Raúl González Núñez, with experience in device fabrication and vibrational spectroscopy; and Kyeong-Im Hong, a specialist in supramolecular chirality. Xinyi Wan is also part of the group and is preparing her doctoral thesis on the synthesis and characterization of chiral semiconductors.

“Our team is in a strong position to push the boundaries of chiral materials and open up new emerging opportunities for next-generation solar technologies,” the researcher celebrates at the start of her project.

Medium and long-term vision

Medium and long-term vision

The research team will investigate the so-called 'CISS effect': "It has never been applied to organic photovoltaics," the scientist adds. "The advantage of using organic materials is their flexibility, since we can put them on all kinds of substrates; and, moreover, as chemists, we can design them however we want and give them the functionalities we need." Ruiz Carretero argues that organic molecules have enormous potential, but acknowledges that they have not yet been made to produce energy at the level of silicon, for example.

In this context, her work focuses on the medium and long term: "If we look at the energy needs forecasts for the next 30 years, we won't have the capacity to meet the demand. That's why we're looking for an alternative material, a material we'll obtain using miniaturization techniques and sustainable chemistry methods," the researcher concludes.