Exploring the impact of the local environment on charge transfer states at molecular donor-acceptor heterojunctions

Technical Report · Tue Mar 05 04:00:00 EST 2024

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/2318724· OSTI ID:2318724

Giebink, Noel ^[1]; Rand, Barry ^[2]; Kahn, Antoine ^[2]

---

1. Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park, PA (United States); The Pennsylvania State University
2. Princeton Univ., NJ (United States)

This program explored a broad range of charge transfer (CT) states in organic solar cells with the goal of understanding how molecular energetics, structure, and morphology influence CT state energy and dynamics, and how this in turn influences solar cell performance. We identified new types of delocalized CT states at ordered molecular heterojunctions, determined the factors that dictate CT state energetic disorder in bulk heterojunctions, determined that hot CT state dissociation is negligible for most systems, that the occupation of CT states is generally non-thermal in disordered heterojunctions, and that quasi-equilibrium generally does not hold in organic solar cells. These findings allowed us to demonstrate the lowest loss in potential of any organic solar cell to date and provide valuable guidance for designing higher efficiency organic solar cells in the future.

• Research Organization: Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park, PA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
• DOE Contract Number: SC0012365
• OSTI ID: 2318724
• Report Number(s): DOE-PSU--0012365
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

14 SOLAR ENERGY
36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
Charge Transfer State
Organic Solar Cell
Photovoltaic