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Combined influence of Urbach’s tail width energy and mobility of charge carriers on the photovoltaic performance of bulk heterojunction organic solar cells

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Abstract

Bulk heterojunction organic solar cells with four different Urbach’s tail width energies (\({E}_{U}\)) are simulated, and the combined influence of \({E}_{U}\) and charge carrier mobility on the short circuit current (\({J}_{sc})\), open circuit voltage (\({V}_{oc})\), fill factor (FF), power conversion efficiency (PCE), Langevin and tail state recombination is investigated. The results show that \({J}_{sc}\) decreases more drastically with increasing \({E}_{U}\) in the lower mobility range and then asymptotically converges to a single value in the large mobility range. Likewise, with the increase in mobility, \({V}_{oc}\) decreases nearly linearly with different slopes depending on different \({E}_{U}\) in the lower mobility range and then different slopes converge to a single slope in the larger mobility range. Thus, \({V}_{oc}\) becomes \({E}_{U}\) independent in the higher mobility range. Furthermore, it is found that by increasing \({E}_{U}\), the maximum values of FF and PCE shift towards the higher mobility range. It is shown that the influence of combined optimization of \({E}_{U}\) and mobility enhances both FF and PCE, but its effect on FF is much more significant than that on PCE.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Engineering, IT and Environment, Charles Darwin University, Darwin, NT, 0909, Australia

    Hooman Mehdizadeh-Rad & Jai Singh

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  1. Hooman Mehdizadeh-Rad
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  2. Jai Singh
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Correspondence to Jai Singh.

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Mehdizadeh-Rad, H., Singh, J. Combined influence of Urbach’s tail width energy and mobility of charge carriers on the photovoltaic performance of bulk heterojunction organic solar cells. J Mater Sci: Mater Electron 30, 10064–10072 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-019-00868-2

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