TY - GEN A1 - Phuong, Le Quang A1 - Hosseini, Seyed Mehrdad A1 - Sandberg, Oskar J. A1 - Zou, Yingping A1 - Woo, Han Young A1 - Neher, Dieter A1 - Shoaee, Safa T1 - Quantifying quasi-fermi level splitting and open-circuit voltage losses in highly efficient nonfullerene organic solar cells T2 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - The power conversion efficiency (PCE) of state-of-the-art organic solar cells is still limited by significant open-circuit voltage (V-OC) losses, partly due to the excitonic nature of organic materials and partly due to ill-designed architectures. Thus, quantifying different contributions of the V-OC losses is of importance to enable further improvements in the performance of organic solar cells. Herein, the spectroscopic and semiconductor device physics approaches are combined to identify and quantify losses from surface recombination and bulk recombination. Several state-of-the-art systems that demonstrate different V-OC losses in their performance are presented. By evaluating the quasi-Fermi level splitting (QFLS) and the V-OC as a function of the excitation fluence in nonfullerene-based PM6:Y6, PM6:Y11, and fullerene-based PPDT2FBT:PCBM devices with different architectures, the voltage losses due to different recombination processes occurring in the active layers, the transport layers, and at the interfaces are assessed. It is found that surface recombination at interfaces in the studied solar cells is negligible, and thus, suppressing the non-radiative recombination in the active layers is the key factor to enhance the PCE of these devices. This study provides a universal tool to explain and further improve the performance of recently demonstrated high-open-circuit-voltage organic solar cells. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 1384 KW - nonfullerene acceptors KW - organic solar cells KW - quasi-Fermi level KW - splitting KW - quasi-steady-state photoinduced absorptions KW - surface KW - recombinations KW - voltage losses Y1 - 2020 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-570018 SN - 1866-8372 IS - 1 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Tokmoldin, Nurlan A1 - Vollbrecht, Joachim A1 - Hosseini, Seyed Mehrdad A1 - Sun, Bowen A1 - Perdigón-Toro, Lorena A1 - Woo, Han Young A1 - Zou, Yingping A1 - Neher, Dieter A1 - Shoaee, Safa T1 - Explaining the fill-factor and photocurrent losses of nonfullerene acceptor-based solar cells by probing the long-range charge carrier diffusion and drift lengths JF - Advanced energy materials N2 - Organic solar cells (OSC) nowadays match their inorganic competitors in terms of current production but lag behind with regards to their open-circuit voltage loss and fill-factor, with state-of-the-art OSCs rarely displaying fill-factor of 80% and above. The fill-factor of transport-limited solar cells, including organic photovoltaic devices, is affected by material and device-specific parameters, whose combination is represented in terms of the established figures of merit, such as theta and alpha. Herein, it is demonstrated that these figures of merit are closely related to the long-range carrier drift and diffusion lengths. Further, a simple approach is presented to devise these characteristic lengths using steady-state photoconductance measurements. This yields a straightforward way of determining theta and alpha in complete cells and under operating conditions. This approach is applied to a variety of photovoltaic devices-including the high efficiency nonfullerene acceptor blends-and show that the diffusion length of the free carriers provides a good correlation with the fill-factor. It is, finally, concluded that most state-of-the-art organic solar cells exhibit a sufficiently large drift length to guarantee efficient charge extraction at short circuit, but that they still suffer from too small diffusion lengths of photogenerated carriers limiting their fill factor. KW - diffusion length KW - drift length KW - figure of merit KW - lifetime‐ mobility product KW - steady‐ state photoconductance Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1002/aenm.202100804 SN - 1614-6840 VL - 11 IS - 22 PB - Wiley-VCH CY - Weinheim ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Tokmoldin, Nurlan A1 - Hosseini, Seyed Mehrdad A1 - Raoufi, Meysam A1 - Phuong, Le Quang A1 - Sandberg, Oskar J. A1 - Guan, Huilan A1 - Zou, Yingping A1 - Neher, Dieter A1 - Shoaee, Safa T1 - Extraordinarily long diffusion length in PM6:Y6 organic solar cells JF - Journal of materials chemistry : A, materials for energy and sustainability N2 - The PM6:Y6 bulk-heterojunction (BHJ) blend system achieves high short-circuit current (J(SC)) values in thick photovoltaic junctions. Here we analyse these solar cells to understand the observed independence of the short-circuit current upon photoactive layer thickness. We employ a range of optoelectronic measurements and analyses, including Mott-Schottky analysis, CELIV, photoinduced absorption spectroscopy, mobility measurements and simulations, to conclude that, the invariant photocurrent for the devices with different active layer thicknesses is associated with the Y6's diffusion length exceeding 300 nm in case of a 300 nm thick cell. This is despite unintentional doping that occurs in PM6 and the associated space-charge effect, which is expected to be even more profound upon photogeneration. This extraordinarily long diffusion length - which is an order of magnitude larger than typical values for organics - dominates transport in the flat-band region of thick junctions. Our work suggests that the performance of the doped PM6:Y6 organic solar cells resembles that of inorganic devices with diffusion transport playing a pivotal role. Ultimately, this is expected to be a key requirement for the fabrication of efficient, high-photocurrent, thick organic solar cells. Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1039/d0ta03016c SN - 2050-7488 SN - 2050-7496 VL - 8 IS - 16 SP - 7854 EP - 7860 PB - Royal Society of Chemistry CY - Cambridge ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Perdigon-Toro, Lorena A1 - Zhang, Huotian A1 - Markina, Anastaa si A1 - Yuan, Jun A1 - Hosseini, Seyed Mehrdad A1 - Wolff, Christian Michael A1 - Zuo, Guangzheng A1 - Stolterfoht, Martin A1 - Zou, Yingping A1 - Gao, Feng A1 - Andrienko, Denis A1 - Shoaee, Safa A1 - Neher, Dieter T1 - Barrierless free charge generation in the high-performance PM6:Y6 bulk heterojunction non-fullerene solar cell JF - Advanced materials N2 - Organic solar cells are currently experiencing a second golden age thanks to the development of novel non-fullerene acceptors (NFAs). Surprisingly, some of these blends exhibit high efficiencies despite a low energy offset at the heterojunction. Herein, free charge generation in the high-performance blend of the donor polymer PM6 with the NFA Y6 is thoroughly investigated as a function of internal field, temperature and excitation energy. Results show that photocurrent generation is essentially barrierless with near-unity efficiency, regardless of excitation energy. Efficient charge separation is maintained over a wide temperature range, down to 100 K, despite the small driving force for charge generation. Studies on a blend with a low concentration of the NFA, measurements of the energetic disorder, and theoretical modeling suggest that CT state dissociation is assisted by the electrostatic interfacial field which for Y6 is large enough to compensate the Coulomb dissociation barrier. KW - driving force KW - non-fullerene acceptors KW - organic solar cells KW - photocurrent generation Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.201906763 SN - 0935-9648 SN - 1521-4095 VL - 32 IS - 9 PB - Wiley-VCH CY - Weinheim ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Phuong, Le Quang A1 - Hosseini, Seyed Mehrdad A1 - Sandberg, Oskar J. A1 - Zou, Yingping A1 - Woo, Han Young A1 - Neher, Dieter A1 - Shoaee, Safa T1 - Quantifying quasi-fermi level splitting and open-circuit voltage losses in highly efficient nonfullerene organic solar cells JF - Solar RRL N2 - The power conversion efficiency (PCE) of state-of-the-art organic solar cells is still limited by significant open-circuit voltage (V-OC) losses, partly due to the excitonic nature of organic materials and partly due to ill-designed architectures. Thus, quantifying different contributions of the V-OC losses is of importance to enable further improvements in the performance of organic solar cells. Herein, the spectroscopic and semiconductor device physics approaches are combined to identify and quantify losses from surface recombination and bulk recombination. Several state-of-the-art systems that demonstrate different V-OC losses in their performance are presented. By evaluating the quasi-Fermi level splitting (QFLS) and the V-OC as a function of the excitation fluence in nonfullerene-based PM6:Y6, PM6:Y11, and fullerene-based PPDT2FBT:PCBM devices with different architectures, the voltage losses due to different recombination processes occurring in the active layers, the transport layers, and at the interfaces are assessed. It is found that surface recombination at interfaces in the studied solar cells is negligible, and thus, suppressing the non-radiative recombination in the active layers is the key factor to enhance the PCE of these devices. This study provides a universal tool to explain and further improve the performance of recently demonstrated high-open-circuit-voltage organic solar cells. KW - nonfullerene acceptors KW - organic solar cells KW - quasi-Fermi level KW - splitting KW - quasi-steady-state photoinduced absorptions KW - surface KW - recombinations KW - voltage losses Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1002/solr.202000649 SN - 2367-198X VL - 5 IS - 1 PB - Wiley-VCH CY - Weinheim ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hosseini, Seyed Mehrdad A1 - Tokmoldin, Nurlan A1 - Lee, Young Woong A1 - Zou, Yingping A1 - Woo, Han Young A1 - Neher, Dieter A1 - Shoaee, Safa T1 - Putting order into PM6:Y6 solar cells to reduce the langevin recombination in 400 nm thick junction JF - Solar RRL N2 - Increasing the active layer thickness without sacrificing the power conversion efficiency (PCE) is one of the great challenges faced by organic solar cells (OSCs) for commercialization. Recently, PM6:Y6 as an OSC based on a non-fullerene acceptor (NFA) has excited the community because of its PCE reaching as high as 15.9%; however, by increasing the thickness, the PCE drops due to the reduction of the fill factor (FF). This drop is attributed to change in mobility ratio with increasing thickness. Furthermore, this work demonstrates that by regulating the packing and the crystallinity of the donor and the acceptor, through volumetric content of chloronaphthalene (CN) as a solvent additive, one can improve the FF of a thick PM6:Y6 device (approximate to 400 nm) from 58% to 68% (PCE enhances from 12.2% to 14.4%). The data indicate that the origin of this enhancement is the reduction of the structural and energetic disorders in the thick device with 1.5% CN compared with 0.5% CN. This correlates with improved electron and hole mobilities and a 50% suppressed bimolecular recombination, such that the non-Langevin reduction factor is 180 times. This work reveals the role of disorder on the charge extraction and bimolecular recombination of NFA-based OSCs. KW - charge carrier extraction KW - energetic disorders KW - non-fullerene acceptors KW - non-Langevin reduction factors KW - thick junctions Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1002/solr.202000498 SN - 2367-198X VL - 4 IS - 11 PB - Wiley-VCH CY - Weinheim ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kniepert, Juliane A1 - Paulke, Andreas A1 - Perdigon-Toro, Lorena A1 - Kurpiers, Jona A1 - Zhang, Huotian A1 - Gao, Feng A1 - Yuan, Jun A1 - Zou, Yingping A1 - Le Corre, Vincent M. A1 - Koster, Lambert Jan Anton A1 - Neher, Dieter T1 - Reliability of charge carrier recombination data determined with charge extraction methods JF - Journal of applied physics N2 - Charge extraction methods are popular for measuring the charge carrier density in thin film organic solar cells and to draw conclusions about the order and coefficient of nongeminate charge recombination. However, results from such studies may be falsified by inhomogeneous steady state carrier profiles or surface recombination. Here, we present a detailed drift-diffusion study of two charge extraction methods, bias-assisted charge extraction (BACE) and time-delayed collection field (TDCF). Simulations are performed over a wide range of the relevant parameters. Our simulations reveal that both charge extraction methods provide reliable information about the recombination order and coefficient if the measurements are performed under appropriate conditions. However, results from BACE measurements may be easily affected by surface recombination, in particular for small active layer thicknesses and low illumination densities. TDCF, on the other hand, is more robust against surface recombination due to its transient nature but also because it allows for a homogeneous high carrier density to be inserted into the active layer. Therefore, TDCF is capable to provide meaningful information on the order and coefficient of recombination even if the model conditions are not exactly fulfilled. We demonstrate this for an only 100 nm thick layer of a highly efficient nonfullerene acceptor (NFA) blend, comprising the donor polymer PM6 and the NFA Y6. TDCF measurements were performed as a function of delay time for different laser fluences and bias conditions. The full set of data could be consistently fitted by a strict second order recombination process, with a bias- and fluence-independent bimolecular recombination coefficient k(2) = 1.7 x 10(-17)m(3) s(-1). BACE measurements performed on the very same layer yielded the identical result, despite the very different excitation conditions. This proves that recombination in this blend is mostly through processes in the bulk and that surface recombination is of minor importance despite the small active layer thickness. Published under license by AIP Publishing. Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5129037 SN - 0021-8979 SN - 1089-7550 VL - 126 IS - 20 PB - American Institute of Physics CY - Melville ER -