Modern plastic solar cells: materials, mechanisms and modeling

We provide a short review of modern ‘plastic’ solar cells, a broad topic that spans materials science, physics, and chemistry. The aim of this review is to provide a primer for non-experts or researchers in related fields who are curious about this rapidly growing field of interdisciplinary research. We introduce the basic concepts of plastic solar cells and design rules for maximizing their efficiency, including modern quantum chemical calculations that can aide in the design of new materials. We discuss the history of the materials and modern trends in polymeric donor materials and fullerene acceptors, and provide demonstrative data from hybrid polymer/quantum dot devices.