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Investigation of Printing‐Based Graded Bulk‐Heterojunction Organic Solar Cells
Author(s) -
Bottenfield Christian G.,
Wei Fanan,
Park Hui Joon,
Guo L. Jay,
Li Guangyong
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
energy technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.91
H-Index - 44
eISSN - 2194-4296
pISSN - 2194-4288
DOI - 10.1002/ente.201402152
Subject(s) - heterojunction , materials science , fabrication , active layer , solar cell , polymer solar cell , nanotechnology , acceptor , organic solar cell , hybrid solar cell , optoelectronics , monte carlo method , layer (electronics) , composite material , polymer , physics , alternative medicine , statistics , pathology , medicine , condensed matter physics , mathematics , thin film transistor
A 2‐step method involving the evaporation of solvent through surface encapsulation and induced alignment (ESSENCIAL) has been used to create a compositionally graded active layer of interspersed acceptor and donor domains by printing‐based technologies, which can be used to fabricate solar cells with higher performance than that from traditional bulk heterojunction fabrication methods. Herein, to clarify the fundamental mechanism of the performance improvement, a multi‐scale simulation has been conducted to compare solar cells resulting from these two types of processing. The multi‐scale simulation identified the underlying improvements of the ESSENCIAL morphology over traditional morphologies. Monte Carlo simulations obtained higher hole‐mobility values and lower monomolecular recombination rates for the ESSENCIAL‐fabricated cells that, in conjunction with the optical and electrical components, showed higher short‐circuit currents, fill factors, and efficiencies, as indicated experimentally. The simulation offers the unique ability to model the varied active layer compositions and elucidate the underlying solar cell physics of complex morphologies.