Nanlong Hong, a Ph.D. candidate in School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, reported an important application of lignin in a new research field of organic solar cells (OSCs) for the first time. The research achievement was honored as front cover paper to be published in Journal of Materials Chemistry A of Royal Chemical Society (RSC). The title of the paper is "An efficient hole transport material based on PEDOT dispersed with lignosulfonate: preparation, characterization and performance in polymer solar cells", and the link can be seen: http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2015/ta/c5ta05167c.
Journal of Materials Chemistry A is the publishing journal of RSC, which is one of the top journals in the field of energy and materials. In tradition, the modified lignin products were usually utilized as dispersants in cement suspension, coal-water slurry, pesticide suspension, and so on. Professor Yuan Li majors in organic optoelectronic materials and photoelectric devices field. He has published some achievements in authorative journals such as JACS, Chemical Science, ACS AMI, Organic Electronics, Organic Letters, and so on. Therefore, on the basis of the previous research, they exploited a new research filed that modified lignin-based polymers can be utilized in organic semi-conduct materials and devices. In this paper, lignin was verified to be a dopant material of semiconductor polymer in organic solar cells device for the first time and the relevant mechanism was also investigated in details. Moreover, six relevant papers and two patents have been published by Professor Yuan Li et. al. and the related research is under progress. This series of achievements exhibit great significance and will provide new concept for the design of hole transport materials, as well as the development and application of lignin or lignin-based semi-conducive polymer in future.