TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ran, Niva A.
A1  - Love, John A.
A1  - Heiber, Michael C.
A1  - Jiao, Xuechen
A1  - Hughes, Michael P.
A1  - Karki, Akchheta
A1  - Wang, Ming
A1  - Brus, Viktor V.
A1  - Wang, Hengbin
A1  - Neher, Dieter
A1  - Ade, Harald
A1  - Bazan, Guillermo C.
A1  - Thuc-Quyen Nguyen, 
T1  - Charge generation and recombination in an organic solar cell with low energetic offsets
JF  - dvanced energy materials
N2  - Organic bulk heterojunction (BHJ) solar cells require energetic offsets between the donor and acceptor to obtain high short-circuit currents (J(SC)) and fill factors (FF). However, it is necessary to reduce the energetic offsets to achieve high open-circuit voltages (V-OC). Recently, reports have highlighted BHJ blends that are pushing at the accepted limits of energetic offsets necessary for high efficiency. Unfortunately, most of these BHJs have modest FF values. How the energetic offset impacts the solar cell characteristics thus remains poorly understood. Here, a comprehensive characterization of the losses in a polymer:fullerene BHJ blend, PIPCP:phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PC61BM), that achieves a high V-OC (0.9 V) with very low energy losses (E-loss = 0.52 eV) from the energy of absorbed photons, a respectable J(SC) (13 mA cm(-2)), but a limited FF (54%) is reported. Despite the low energetic offset, the system does not suffer from field-dependent generation and instead it is characterized by very fast nongeminate recombination and the presence of shallow traps. The charge-carrier losses are attributed to suboptimal morphology due to high miscibility between PIPCP and PC61BM. These results hold promise that given the appropriate morphology, the J(SC), V-OC, and FF can all be improved, even with very low energetic offsets.
KW  - energetic offset
KW  - fill factor
KW  - morphology
KW  - organic solar cells
KW  - recombination
Y1  - 2018
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1002/aenm.201701073
SN  - 1614-6832
SN  - 1614-6840
VL  - 8
IS  - 5
PB  - Wiley-VCH
CY  - Weinheim
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Vollbrecht, Joachim
A1  - Brus, Viktor V.
T1  - Effects of recombination order on open-circuit voltage decay measurements of organic and perovskite solar cells
JF  - Energies : open-access journal of related scientific research, technology development and studies in policy and management / Molecular Diversity Preservation International (MDPI)
N2  - Non-geminate recombination, as one of the most relevant loss mechanisms in organic and perovskite solar cells, deserves special attention in research efforts to further increase device performance. It can be subdivided into first, second, and third order processes, which can be elucidated by the effects that they have on the time-dependent open-circuit voltage decay. In this study, analytical expressions for the open-circuit voltage decay exhibiting one of the aforementioned recombination mechanisms were derived. It was possible to support the analytical models with experimental examples of three different solar cells, each of them dominated either by first (PBDBT:CETIC-4F), second (PM6:Y6), or third (irradiated CH3NH3PbI3) order recombination. Furthermore, a simple approach to estimate the dominant recombination process was also introduced and tested on these examples. Moreover, limitations of the analytical models and the measurement technique itself were discussed.
KW  - organic solar cells
KW  - perovskite solar cells
KW  - non-geminate recombination
KW  - recombination order
KW  - open-circuit voltage decay
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.3390/en14164800
SN  - 1996-1073
VL  - 14
IS  - 16
PB  - MDPI
CY  - Basel
ER  -