Tail state limited photocurrent collection of thick photoactive layers in organic solar cells

Jiaying Wu, Joel Luke, Harrison Ka Hin Lee, Pabitra Shakya Tuladhar, Hyojung Cha, Soo-Young Jang, Wing Chung Tsoi, Martin Heeney, Hongkyu Kang (), Kwanghee Lee, Thomas Kirchartz (), Ji-Seon Kim () and James R. Durrant ()
Additional contact information
Jiaying Wu: Imperial College London
Joel Luke: Imperial College London
Harrison Ka Hin Lee: Swansea University
Pabitra Shakya Tuladhar: Imperial College London
Hyojung Cha: Imperial College London
Soo-Young Jang: Imperial College London
Wing Chung Tsoi: Swansea University
Martin Heeney: Imperial College London
Hongkyu Kang: Imperial College London
Kwanghee Lee: Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology
Thomas Kirchartz: IEK5-Photovoltaik, Forschungszentrum Jülich
Ji-Seon Kim: Imperial College London
James R. Durrant: Imperial College London

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract We analyse organic solar cells with four different photoactive blends exhibiting differing dependencies of short-circuit current upon photoactive layer thickness. These blends and devices are analysed by transient optoelectronic techniques of carrier kinetics and densities, air photoemission spectroscopy of material energetics, Kelvin probe measurements of work function, Mott-Schottky analyses of apparent doping density and by device modelling. We conclude that, for the device series studied, the photocurrent loss with thick active layers is primarily associated with the accumulation of photo-generated charge carriers in intra-bandgap tail states. This charge accumulation screens the device internal electrical field, preventing efficient charge collection. Purification of one studied donor polymer is observed to reduce tail state distribution and density and increase the maximal photoactive thickness for efficient operation. Our work suggests that selecting organic photoactive layers with a narrow distribution of tail states is a key requirement for the fabrication of efficient, high photocurrent, thick organic solar cells.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12951-7 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:10:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-12951-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-12951-7

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().