@misc{CardinalettiKestersBerthoetal.2014,
  author    = {Cardinaletti, Ilaria and Kesters, Jurgen and Bertho, Sabine and Conings, Bert and Piersimoni, Fortunato and Lutsen, Laurence and Nesladek, Milos and Van Mele, Bruno and Van Assche, Guy and Vandewal, Koen and Salleo, Alberto and Vanderzande, Dirk and Maes, Wouter and Manca, Jean V.},
  title     = {Toward bulk heterojunction polymer solar cells with thermally stable active layer morphology},
  series = {Journal of photonics for energy},
  volume    = {4},
  journal   = {Journal of photonics for energy},
  publisher = {SPIE},
  address   = {Bellingham},
  issn      = {1947-7988},
  doi       = {10.1117/1.JPE.4.040997},
  pages     = {12},
  year      = {2014},
  abstract  = {When state-of-the-art bulk heterojunction organic solar cells with ideal morphology are exposed to prolonged storage or operation at elevated temperatures, a thermally induced disruption of the active layer blend can occur, in the form of a separation of donor and acceptor domains, leading to diminished photovoltaic performance. Toward the long-term use of organic solar cells in real-life conditions, an important challenge is, therefore, the development of devices with a thermally stable active layer morphology. Several routes are being explored, ranging from the use of high glass transition temperature, cross-linkable and/or side-chain functionalized donor and acceptor materials, to light-induced dimerization of the fullerene acceptor. A better fundamental understanding of the nature and underlying mechanisms of the phase separation and stabilization effects has been obtained through a variety of analytical, thermal analysis, and electro-optical techniques. Accelerated aging systems have been used to study the degradation kinetics of bulk heterojunction solar cells in situ at various temperatures to obtain aging models predicting solar cell lifetime. The following contribution gives an overview of the current insights regarding the intrinsic thermally induced aging effects and the proposed solutions, illustrated by examples of our own research groups. (C) The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{VandewalBenduhnSchellhammeretal.2017,
  author    = {Vandewal, Koen and Benduhn, Johannes and Schellhammer, Karl Sebastian and Vangerven, Tim and R{\"u}ckert, Janna E. and Piersimoni, Fortunato and Scholz, Reinhard and Zeika, Olaf and Fan, Yeli and Barlow, Stephen and Neher, Dieter and Marder, Seth R. and Manca, Jean and Spoltore, Donato and Cuniberti, Gianaurelio and Ortmann, Frank},
  title     = {Absorption Tails of Donor},
  series = {Journal of the American Chemical Society},
  volume    = {139},
  journal   = {Journal of the American Chemical Society},
  number    = {4},
  publisher = {American Chemical Society},
  address   = {Washington},
  issn      = {0002-7863},
  doi       = {10.1021/jacs.6b12857},
  pages     = {1699 -- 1704},
  year      = {2017},
  abstract  = {In disordered organic semiconductors, the transfer of a rather localized charge carrier from one site to another triggers a deformation of the molecular structure quantified by the intramolecular relaxation energy. A similar structural relaxation occurs upon population of intermolecular charge-transfer (CT) states formed at organic electron donor (D)-acceptor (A) interfaces. Weak CT absorption bands for D A complexes occur at photon energies below the optical gaps of both the donors and the C-60 acceptor as a result of optical transitions from the neutral ground state to the ionic CT state. In this work, we show that temperature-activated intramolecular vibrations of the ground state play a major role in determining the line shape of such CT absorption bands. This allows us to extract values for the relaxation energy related to the geometry change from neutral to ionic CT complexes. Experimental values for the relaxation energies of 20 D:C-60 CT complexes correlate with values calculated within density functional theory. These results provide an experimental method for determining the polaron relaxation energy in solid-state organic D-A blends and show the importance of a reduced relaxation energy, which we introduce to characterize thermally activated CT processes.},
  language  = {en}
}