Proceedings of International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics (HOPV16)
Publication date: 28th March 2016
Over the last decade, the power conversion efficiencies of bulk heterojunction (BHJ) organic solar cells (OSCs) have steadily increased, demonstrating their high potential for photovoltaic applications. Yet, further improvement will depend crucially on the understanding of detrimental charge recombination mechanisms occurring in the active layer of such devices. Continuous-wave photo-induced absorption (CW-PIA) is particularly well-suited to study light-induced charge carriers in BHJ blends and devices as it requires only moderate light intensities, comparable to standard solar cell operation conditions. The technique has been mainly applied to gain spectral information on molecular photo-excitations, but also dynamical information could be gained from the dependence on modulation frequency [1].
In an alternative approach we focus here on the time dependence of the PIA-response under modulation with sharp on/off switching, as previously demonstrated by Hagfeldt and Boschloo [2]. As such, time-domain CW-PIA offers unique insights into the charge generation and recombination kinetics both in thin films of BHJ blends and in OSC devices. By modeling of the functional behavior of time-domain PIA data, it is possible to distinguish between underlying recombination mechanisms and to extract relevant rate parameters. In this context, we identify two major types of recombination mechanisms depending on whether the involved electron and hole originate from the same photon-event – so called ‘geminate recombination’ – or not. We performed a detailed analysis of time-domain CW-PIA data taken under varying conditions of excitation intensity and modulation frequency on spin-coated films of BHJ blends. Parallel kinetic modeling of these sets of data provides qualitative and quantitative information of importance for the understanding of recombination processes in these systems.
[1] T. Kobayashi, Y. Terada, T. Nagase, and H. Naito: Appl. Phys. Express 4 (2011) 126602.
[2] G. Boschloo and A. Hagfeldt: Inorg. Chim. Acta 361 (2008) 729.