TY  - JOUR
A1  - Jiang, Wei
A1  - Tao, Chen
A1  - Stolterfoht, Martin
A1  - Jin, Hui
A1  - Stephen, Meera
A1  - Lin, Qianqian
A1  - Nagiri, Ravi C. R.
A1  - Burn, Paul L.
A1  - Gentle, Ian R.
T1  - Hole-transporting materials for low donor content organic solar cells
BT  - charge transport and device performance
JF  - Organic electronics : physics, materials and applications
N2  - Low donor content solar cells are an intriguing class of photovoltaic device about which there is still considerable discussion with respect to their mode of operation. We have synthesized a series of triphenylamine-based materials for use in low donor content devices with the electron accepting [6,6]-phenyl-C71-butyric acid methyl ester (PC(7)0BM). The triphenylamine-based materials absorb light in the near UV enabling the PC(7)0BM to be be the main light absorbing organic semiconducting material in the solar cell. It was found that the devices did not operate as classical Schottky junctions but rather photocurrent was generated by hole transfer from the photo-excited PC(7)0BM to the triphenylamine-based donors. We found that replacing the methoxy surface groups with methyl groups on the donor material led to a decrease in hole mobility for the neat films, which was due to the methyl substituted materials having the propensity to aggregate. The thermodynamic drive to aggregate was advantageous for the performance of the low donor content (6 wt%) films. It was found that the 6 wt% donor devices generally gave higher performance than devices containing 50 wt% of the donor.
KW  - photoexcited hole transfer
KW  - photocurrent generation
KW  - synthesis
KW  - hole
KW  - mobility
KW  - low donor content
KW  - Schottky junction
Y1  - 2020
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.orgel.2019.105480
SN  - 1566-1199
SN  - 1878-5530
VL  - 76
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Amsterdam
ER  -