Beyond Shockley-Queisser: Molecular Approaches to High-Efficiency Photovoltaics

Molecular materials afford abundant flexibility in the tunability of physical and electronic properties. As such, they are ideally suited to engineering low-cost, flexible, light-harvesting materials that break away from the single-threshold paradigm. Single-threshold solar cells are capable of harvesting a maximum of 33.7% of incident sunlight, whereas two-threshold cells are capable of energy harvesting efficiencies exceeding 45%. In this Perspective, we provide the theoretical background with which upper efficiency limits for various multiple-threshold solar cell architectures may be calculated and review and discuss various reports that employ processes such as triplet-triplet annihilation and singlet fission in multiple-threshold devices comprised of molecular materials.