Fullerenes: the stars of photovoltaics

Abstract

“The molecule, buckminsterfullerene, is beautiful physically and intellectually. Its qualities, and even some of its properties, can be appreciated instantly and intuitively by nonscientists. Its uniqueness is bound to lead to novel applications – superconductivity is the leading contender at the moment”. So the journalist Hugh Aldersey-Williams presented in his book about C₆₀ fullerene, “The Most Beautiful Molecule”, first published in 1995. Despite being quite old, this sentence is still strongly valid. In fact, since their discovery in 1985, fullerenes have raised huge interest among the scientific community, and they still preserve and increase it. This resulted in an impressive amount of research dealing with the molecule and its derivatives, and most of these studies have been collected in numerous reviews concerning fullerene's various properties and applications. Precisely due to the existence of these uncountable reviews, the present paper will take a slightly different path by describing important facts about fullerenes in the field of photovoltaics.