Polaron recombination in pristine and annealed bulk heterojunction solar cells

Charge Carrier Recombination in Bulk Heterojunction Organic Solar Cells

Photovoltaic phenomenon was first observed by E. Becquerel (Becquerel) in 1839. He observed the electric current-lit silver electrode, immersed in the electrolyte. In 1894, taking advantage of the observed photoconductivity phenomenon in amorphous selenium the semiconductor solar cell was developed. The very first silicon p-n junction solar cell was made in 1954, energy conversion efficiency of...

Bulk Heterojunction Solar Cells — Opportunities and Challenges

Hydrogen bonding in bulk heterojunction solar cells: A case study

Small molecules with dithieno[3,2-b;2',3'-d]thiophene as central building block and octyl cyanoacetate and octyl cyanoacetamide as different terminal building blocks have been designed and synthesized. The amide containing small molecule can form intermolecular hydrogen bonding between N-H...O = C of the amide group. The photovoltaic properties and active layer morphologies of the two molecules...

Morphological Control Agent in Ternary Blend Bulk Heterojunction Solar Cells

Bulk heterojunction (BHJ) organic photovoltaic (OPV) promise low cost solar energy and have caused an explosive increase in investigations during the last decade. Control over the 3D morphology of BHJ blend films in various length scales is one of the pillars accounting for the significant advance of OPV performance recently. In this contribution, we focus on the strategy of incorporating an ad...

Incomplete exciton harvesting from fullerenes in bulk heterojunction solar cells.

We investigate the internal quantum efficiencies (IQEs) of high efficiency poly-3-hexylthiophene:[6,6]-phenyl-C(61)-butyric acid methyl ester (P3HT:PCBM) solar cells and find them to be lower at wavelengths where the PCBM absorbs. Because the exciton diffusion length in PCBM is too small, excitons generated in PCBM decay before reaching the donor-acceptor interface. This result has implications...