@article{HosseiniRolandKurpiersetal.2019, author = {Hosseini, Seyed Mehrdad and Roland, Steffen and Kurpiers, Jona and Chen, Zhiming and Zhang, Kai and Huang, Fei and Armin, Ardalan and Neher, Dieter and Shoaee, Safa}, title = {Impact of Bimolecular Recombination on the Fill Factor of Fullerene and Nonfullerene-Based Solar Cells}, series = {The journal of physical chemistry : C, Nanomaterials and interfaces}, volume = {123}, journal = {The journal of physical chemistry : C, Nanomaterials and interfaces}, number = {11}, publisher = {American Chemical Society}, address = {Washington}, issn = {1932-7447}, doi = {10.1021/acs.jpcc.8b11669}, pages = {6823 -- 6830}, year = {2019}, abstract = {Power conversion efficiencies of donor/acceptor organic solar cells utilizing nonfullerene acceptors have now increased beyond the record of their fullerene-based counterparts. There remain many fundamental questions regarding nanomorphology, interfacial states, charge generation and extraction, and losses in these systems. Herein, we present a comparative study of bulk heterojunction solar cells composed of a recently introduced naphthothiadiazole-based polymer (NT812) as the electron donor and two different acceptor molecules, namely, [6,6]-phenyl-C71-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM)[70] and 3,9-bis(2-methylene-(3-(1,1-dicyanomethylene)-indanone))-5,5,11,11-tetrakis(4-hexylphenyl)-dithieno[2,3-d:2′,3′-d′]-s-indaceno[1,2-b:5,6-b′]dithiophene (ITIC). A comparison between the photovoltaic performance of these two types of solar cells reveals that the open-circuit voltage (Voc) of the NT812:ITIC-based solar cell is larger, but the fill factor (FF) is lower than that of the NT812:PCBM[70] device. We find the key reason behind this reduced FF in the ITIC-based device to be faster nongeminate recombination relative to the NT812:PCBM[70] system.}, language = {en} } @article{RolandKniepertLoveetal.2019, author = {Roland, Steffen and Kniepert, Juliane and Love, John A. and Negi, Vikas and Liu, Feilong and Bobbert, Peter and Melianas, Armantas and Kemerink, Martijn and Hofacker, Andreas and Neher, Dieter}, title = {Equilibrated Charge Carrier Populations Govern Steady-State Nongeminate Recombination in Disordered Organic Solar Cells}, series = {The journal of physical chemistry letters}, volume = {10}, journal = {The journal of physical chemistry letters}, number = {6}, publisher = {American Chemical Society}, address = {Washington}, issn = {1948-7185}, doi = {10.1021/acs.jpclett.9b00516}, pages = {1374 -- 1381}, year = {2019}, abstract = {We employed bias-assisted charge extraction techniques to investigate the transient and steady-state recombination of photogenerated charge carriers in complete devices of a disordered polymer-fullerene blend. Charge recombination is shown to be dispersive, with a significant slowdown of the recombination rate over time, consistent with the results from kinetic Monte Carlo simulations. Surprisingly, our experiments reveal little to no contributions from early time recombination of nonequilibrated charge carriers to the steady-state recombination properties. We conclude that energetic relaxation of photogenerated carriers outpaces any significant nongeminate recombination under application-relevant illumination conditions. With equilibrated charges dominating the steady-state recombination, quasi-equilibrium concepts appear suited for describing the open-circuit voltage of organic solar cells despite pronounced energetic disorder.}, language = {en} } @article{UllbrichBenduhnJiaetal.2019, author = {Ullbrich, Sascha and Benduhn, Johannes and Jia, Xiangkun and Nikolis, Vasileios C. and Tvingstedt, Kristofer and Piersimoni, Fortunato and Roland, Steffen and Liu, Yuan and Wu, Jinhan and Fischer, Axel and Neher, Dieter and Reineke, Sebastian and Spoltore, Donato and Vandewal, Koen}, title = {Emissive and charge-generating donor-acceptor interfaces for organic optoelectronics with low voltage losses}, series = {Nature materials}, volume = {18}, journal = {Nature materials}, number = {5}, publisher = {Nature Publ. Group}, address = {London}, issn = {1476-1122}, doi = {10.1038/s41563-019-0324-5}, pages = {459 -- 464}, year = {2019}, abstract = {Intermolecular charge-transfer states at the interface between electron donating (D) and accepting (A) materials are crucial for the operation of organic solar cells but can also be exploited for organic light-emitting diodes(1,2). Non-radiative charge-transfer state decay is dominant in state-of-the-art D-A-based organic solar cells and is responsible for large voltage losses and relatively low power-conversion efficiencies as well as electroluminescence external quantum yields in the 0.01-0.0001\% range(3,4). In contrast, the electroluminescence external quantum yield reaches up to 16\% in D-A-based organic light-emitting diodes(5-7). Here, we show that proper control of charge-transfer state properties allows simultaneous occurrence of a high photovoltaic and emission quantum yield within a single, visible-light-emitting D-A system. This leads to ultralow-emission turn-on voltages as well as significantly reduced voltage losses upon solar illumination. These results unify the description of the electro-optical properties of charge-transfer states in organic optoelectronic devices and foster the use of organic D-A blends in energy conversion applications involving visible and ultraviolet photons(8-11).}, language = {en} } @article{SchwarzeSchellhammerOrtsteinetal.2019, author = {Schwarze, Martin and Schellhammer, Karl Sebastian and Ortstein, Katrin and Benduhn, Johannes and Gaul, Christopher and Hinderhofer, Alexander and Perdig{\´o}n-Toro, Lorena and Scholz, Reinhard and Kublitski, Jonas and Roland, Steffen and Lau, Matthias and Poelking, Carl and Andrienko, Denis and Cuniberti, Gianaurelio and Schreiber, Frank and Neher, Dieter and Vandewal, Koen and Ortmann, Frank and Leo, Karl}, title = {Impact of molecular quadrupole moments on the energy levels at organic heterojunctions}, series = {Nature Communications}, volume = {10}, journal = {Nature Communications}, publisher = {Nature Publ. Group}, address = {London}, issn = {2041-1723}, doi = {10.1038/s41467-019-10435-2}, pages = {9}, year = {2019}, abstract = {The functionality of organic semiconductor devices crucially depends on molecular energies, namely the ionisation energy and the electron affinity. Ionisation energy and electron affinity values of thin films are, however, sensitive to film morphology and composition, making their prediction challenging. In a combined experimental and simulation study on zinc-phthalocyanine and its fluorinated derivatives, we show that changes in ionisation energy as a function of molecular orientation in neat films or mixing ratio in blends are proportional to the molecular quadrupole component along the p-p-stacking direction. We apply these findings to organic solar cells and demonstrate how the electrostatic interactions can be tuned to optimise the energy of the charge-transfer state at the donor-acceptor interface and the dissociation barrier for free charge carrier generation. The confirmation of the correlation between interfacial energies and quadrupole moments for other materials indicates its relevance for small molecules and polymers.}, language = {en} }