TY - JOUR A1 - Kniepert, Juliane A1 - Schubert, Marcel A1 - Blakesley, James C. A1 - Neher, Dieter T1 - Photogeneration and recombination in P3HT/PCBM solar cells probed by time-delayed collection field experiments T2 - The journal of physical chemistry letters N2 - Time-delayed collection field (TDCF) experiments are performed on bulk heterojunction solar cells comprised of a blend of poly(3-hexylthiophene) and [6,6]-phenyl C-71 butyric acid methyl ester. TDCF is analogous to a pump-probe experiment using optical excitation and an electrical probe with a resolution of < 100 ns. The number of free charge carriers extracted after a short delay is found to be independent of the electric field during illumination. Also, experiments performed with a variable delay between the optical excitation and the electrical probe do not reveal any evidence for the generation of charge via field-assisted dissociation of bound long-lived polaron pairs. Photocurrent transients are well fitted by computational drift diffusion simulations with only direct generation of free charge carriers. With increasing delay times between pump and probe, two loss mechanisms are identified; first, charge-carriers are swept out of the device by the internal electric field, and second, bimolecular recombination of the remaining carriers takes place with a reduced recombination coefficient. Y1 - 2011 UR - https://publishup.uni-potsdam.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/36912 SN - 1948-7185 VL - 2 IS - 7 SP - 700 EP - 705 PB - American Chemical Society CY - Washington ER -