Journal article

Photo-Carrier Recombination in Polymer Solar Cells Based on P3HT and Silole-Based Copolymer

Song Chen, Kaushik Roy Choudhury, Jegadesan Subbiah, Chad M Amb, John R Reynolds, Franky So

ADVANCED ENERGY MATERIALS | WILEY-V C H VERLAG GMBH | Published : 2011

Abstract

Photo-current loss in donor-acceptor (DA) polymer-fullerene bulk heterojunction solar cells was studied via carrier transport and recombination measurements. Focusing on the DA polymer poly((4,4-dioctyldithieno (3,2-b:2',3'-d) silole)-2,6-diyl-alt-(2,1,3-benzothiadiazole)-4,7-diyl) (DTS-BTD) we found that the carrier transport is well-balanced and attribute the loss mechanism in DTS-BTD solar cells to carrier recombination. Using carrier extraction with linear increasing voltage (photo-CELIV) and transient photo-voltage (TPV), we show that carrier recombination plays an important role in photo-current extraction at open circuit conditions due to increase in photo-excited carrier concentratio..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Grants

Awarded by Department of Energy Basic Energy Sciences


Awarded by AFOSR


Funding Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the Florida Energy Systems Consortium, the Department of Energy Basic Energy Sciences (Contract number: DE-FG0207ER46464), and AFOSR (FA9550-09-1-0320) for the financial support for this work.