Unraveling Device Physics of Dilute-Donor Narrow-Bandgap Organic Solar Cells with Highly Transparent Active Layers

Adv Mater. 2022 Aug;34(31):e2203796. doi: 10.1002/adma.202203796. Epub 2022 Jul 3.

Abstract

The charge generation-recombination dynamics in three narrow-bandgap near-IR absorbing nonfullerene (NFA) based organic photovoltaic (OPV) systems with varied donor concentrations of 40%, 30%, and 20% are investigated. The dilution of the polymer donor with visible-range absorption leads to highly transparent active layers with blend average visible transmittance (AVT) values of 64%, 70%, and 77%, respectively. Opaque devices in the optimized highly reproducible device configuration comprising these transparent active layers lead to photoconversion efficiencies (PCEs) of 7.0%, 6.5%, and 4.1%. The investigation of these structures yields quantitative insights into changes in the charge generation, non-geminate charge recombination, and extraction dynamics upon dilution of the donor. Lastly, this study gives an outlook for employing the highly transparent active layers in semitransparent organic photovoltaics (ST-OPVs).

Keywords: average visible transmittance; organic photovoltaics; recombination studies; semitransparent solar cells.