Competition between recombination and extraction of free charges determines the fill factor of organic solar cells

Davide Bartesaghi, Irene del Carmen Pérez, Juliane Kniepert, Steffen Roland, Mathieu Turbiez, Dieter Neher and L. Jan Anton Koster ()
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Davide Bartesaghi: Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials, University of Groningen, Nijenborgh 4, NL-9747AG Groningen, The Netherlands
Irene del Carmen Pérez: Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials, University of Groningen, Nijenborgh 4, NL-9747AG Groningen, The Netherlands
Juliane Kniepert: Institute of Physics and Astronomy, University of Potsdam
Steffen Roland: Institute of Physics and Astronomy, University of Potsdam
Mathieu Turbiez: BASF Schweiz AG
Dieter Neher: Institute of Physics and Astronomy, University of Potsdam
L. Jan Anton Koster: Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials, University of Groningen, Nijenborgh 4, NL-9747AG Groningen, The Netherlands

Nature Communications, 2015, vol. 6, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract Among the parameters that characterize a solar cell and define its power-conversion efficiency, the fill factor is the least well understood, making targeted improvements difficult. Here we quantify the competition between charge extraction and recombination by using a single parameter θ, and we demonstrate that this parameter is directly related to the fill factor of many different bulk-heterojunction solar cells. Our finding is supported by experimental measurements on 15 different donor:acceptor combinations, as well as by drift-diffusion simulations of organic solar cells in which charge-carrier mobilities, recombination rate, light intensity, energy levels and active-layer thickness are all varied over wide ranges to reproduce typical experimental conditions. The results unify the fill factors of several very different donor:acceptor combinations and give insight into why fill factors change so much with thickness, light intensity and materials properties. To achieve fill factors larger than 0.8 requires further improvements in charge transport while reducing recombination.

Date: 2015
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DOI: 10.1038/ncomms8083

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