Type
ArticleKAUST Department
KAUST Solar Center (KSC)Material Science and Engineering Program
Physical Science and Engineering (PSE) Division
Date
2018-03-02Online Publication Date
2018-03-02Print Publication Date
2018-03-22Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/627449
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
While substantial progress in the efficiency of polymer-based solar cells was possible by optimizing the energy levels of the polymer and more recently also the acceptor molecule, further progress beyond 10% efficiency requires a number of criteria to be fulfilled simultaneously, namely, low energy-level offsets at the donor–acceptor heterojunction, low open-circuit voltage losses due to nonradiative recombination, and efficient charge transport and collection. In this feature article we discuss these criteria considering thermodynamic limits, their correlation to photocurrent and photovoltage, and effects on the fill factor. Each criterion is quantified by a figure of merit (FOM) that directly relates to device performance. To ensure a wide applicability, we focus on FOMs that are easily accessible from common experiments. We demonstrate the relevance of these FOMs by looking at the historic and recent achievements of organic solar cells. We hope that the presented FOMs are or will become a valuable tool to evaluate, monitor, and guide further development of new organic absorber materials for solar cells.Citation
Kirchartz T, Kaienburg P, Baran D (2018) Figures of Merit Guiding Research on Organic Solar Cells. The Journal of Physical Chemistry C 122: 5829–5843. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpcc.8b01598.Sponsors
T.K. acknowledges support from the DFG (Grant No. KI-1571/2-1). D.B. thanks the Helmholtz Association for a Helmholtz Postdoctoral Fellowship. We thank J. Benduhn and K. Vandewal for sharing the data presented in Figure 4b.Publisher
American Chemical Society (ACS)Additional Links
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jpcc.8b01598ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1021/acs.jpcc.8b01598