Proceedings of 6th International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics (HOPV14)
Publication date: 1st March 2014
In this talk, I will present an overview over the key features of small-molecule organic solar cells and recent developments in the field. One central research area is the design of the bulk heterojunction active layer, requiring a nanoscale phase separation and optimized morphology to achieve efficient operation. A key challenge of the field is to find design rules which relate the molecular structure of absorber materials to layer morphology and cell properties. The difficulty is that small changes of the molecular structure, leaving the electronic properties of the individual molecule nearly unchanged, can lead to large changes in the crystal packing and molecular orientation, causing significant differences in the electronic properties in the active layer. Furthermore, I will discuss highly efficient multijunction structures with optimized electrical and optical properties. Very efficient recombination contacts can be realized by n- and p-type doped transport layers. Structures based on these approaches have reached efficiencies of 12% and have the potential to reach approximately 20%. Furthermore, these high-efficiency cells also show encouraging lifetimes.