IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcom/v6y2015i1d10.1038_ncomms7951.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Impact of charge transport on current–voltage characteristics and power-conversion efficiency of organic solar cells

Author

Listed:
  • Uli Würfel

    (Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE
    Material Research Centre FMF, University of Freiburg)

  • Dieter Neher

    (Institute of Physics and Astronomy, University of Potsdam)

  • Annika Spies

    (Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE
    Material Research Centre FMF, University of Freiburg)

  • Steve Albrecht

    (Institute of Physics and Astronomy, University of Potsdam
    Present address: Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie GmbH, Institut für Silizium-Photovoltaik, Kekuléstrasse 5, 12489 Berlin, Germany)

Abstract

This work elucidates the impact of charge transport on the photovoltaic properties of organic solar cells. Here we show that the analysis of current–voltage curves of organic solar cells under illumination with the Shockley equation results in values for ideality factor, photocurrent and parallel resistance, which lack physical meaning. Drift-diffusion simulations for a wide range of charge-carrier mobilities and illumination intensities reveal significant carrier accumulation caused by poor transport properties, which is not included in the Shockley equation. As a consequence, the separation of the quasi Fermi levels in the organic photoactive layer (internal voltage) differs substantially from the external voltage for almost all conditions. We present a new analytical model, which considers carrier transport explicitly. The model shows excellent agreement with full drift-diffusion simulations over a wide range of mobilities and illumination intensities, making it suitable for realistic efficiency predictions for organic solar cells.

Suggested Citation

  • Uli Würfel & Dieter Neher & Annika Spies & Steve Albrecht, 2015. "Impact of charge transport on current–voltage characteristics and power-conversion efficiency of organic solar cells," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 6(1), pages 1-9, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:6:y:2015:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms7951
    DOI: 10.1038/ncomms7951
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms7951
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/ncomms7951?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Anas Al Tarabsheh & Muhammad Akmal & Mohammed Ghazal, 2017. "Series Connected Photovoltaic Cells—Modelling and Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(3), pages 1-9, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:6:y:2015:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms7951. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.