Organic Photovoltaics

Mechanisms,Materials andDevices. Edited bySam-Shajing Sunand Niyazi SerdarSariciftci. CRCPress/Taylor &Francis 2003.664 pp., hardcover$ 149.95.—ISBN0-8247-5963-X

The area of organic photovoltaics hasmade tremendous advances in recentyears, as the field develops towardsdevices with efficiencies and lifetimesthat are appropriate for real applica-tions in low-cost solar cells. This text istherefore a timely contribution, and as amajor work containing 25 diverse chap-ters contributed by a total of 63 authors,it promises to play a prominent role indisseminating knowledge in the field.The most appropriate audience for thetext will be researchers involved inorganic photovoltaics, and also inrelated areas including dye-sensitizedor hybrid solar cells and organic/molec-ular-electronic materials in general.

The book is divided into three sec-tions. For the more general reader, thefirst section contains overview chaptersthat cover molecular and polymericphotovoltaic devices and the historicaldevelopment and types of inorganicsolar cells. These chapters provide anexcellent narrative and a general pictureof the photovoltaics field and organicmaterials in particular. The followingtwo sections on “Mechanisms and Mod-elling” and “Materials and Devices”essentially contain chapters of a morespecific kind, dealing with aspects of the

various organic semiconductors andother relevant materials (polymers,block copolymers, fullerenes, liquidcrystals, organic dyes, carbon nanotubes,quantum dots), device construction,morphology, interfacial science, andmechanisms of charge separation, trans-port, and collection, which combine todetermine the performance of devices.Although these chapters delve intomuch more specialist topics, they aregenerally very accessible, with only theoccasional requirement for particularmathematical or device-oriented knowl-edge. This is an important feature forsuch a multidisciplinary area, and main-tains the book,s usefulness to all parts ofthe target community.

These chapters from the latter twosections mostly serve as self-containedreviews, and although this necessarilyleads to some repetition of introductorymaterial, it also means that there is noneed to follow the book in a set order toaccess each topic, which makes it appro-priate for specialist researchers whowish to dip into particular aspects. Thiscombination of the overview materialand more focused chapters within asingle text provides a tremendousresource for both newcomers and estab-lished specialists in the field. A thoroughindex also makes sure that the bookfunctions as an integrated text ratherthan just a collection of reviews. It is alsovery welcome to see that space in someof these chapters is devoted to thesynthetic chemistry underpinning thedevelopment of some organic semicon-ductors, an aspect that is often over-looked by texts in the organic electronicmaterials field.

The book remains strongly focusedon all-organic photovoltaics, althoughrelated systems are briefly covered inChapter 4, and Chapter 14 covers devi-ces incorporating quantum dots. In par-ticular, devices based on dye-sensitizednanocrystalline metal oxides, althoughmentioned many times, are not coveredin a dedicated chapter. The relationshipbetween these metal-oxide dye-cells andall-organic photovoltaics devices isinteresting, as they share common fea-tures of the photovoltaic mechanismand aspects of the processing, andincreasingly share some materials com-ponents as well. The opportunity forfurther cross-fertilization of these fields

is an exciting prospect that may lead tonew devices and new insights, andperhaps the lack of a specific chapterdedicated to relevant advances in metal-oxide dye-cells misses an opportunity tounderline this.

In summary, this will be an essentialtext in the area of organic photovoltaics,as it thoroughly defines the field up tothe time of publication. The formatprovides both a pedagogical overviewthat is of great value to the more generalreader from the wider organic/molecu-lar-electronic materials community, andin-depth articles for the physics, chemis-try, and engineering specialists workingin the area.

Neil RobertsonSchool of ChemistryUniversity of Edinburgh (UK)

DOI: 10.1002/anie.200585423

Chemical Micro ProcessEngineering

Processing andPlants. By VolkerHessel, Holger L�we,Andreas M!ller andGunther Kolb. Wiley-VCH, Weinheim2005. 651 pp.,hardcoverE 189.00.—ISBN3-527-30998-5

Here is another brick in the world ofmicrostructured components for chem-ical processes. This is the third book onchemical micro process engineeringfrom the team at the Mainz Institutefor Microengineering (IMM), and fol-lows their first book published in 2000and the second one published in 2004,which was more detailed and focused onFundamentals, Modelling and Reactions.This latest book contains 650 pages andis organized in only four chapters. As inthe 2004 book, some chapters aredevoted to more fundamental or con-ceptual considerations and others tospecific applications. Consequently(and fortunately!), the chapters can be

AngewandteChemieBooks

7321Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2006, 45, 7321 – 7322 ; 2006 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim