Entropy and Disorder Enable Charge Separation in Organic Solar Cells
Samantha Hood a, Ivan Kassal a
a University of Queensland, School of Mathematics and Physics, Brisbane QLD 4067, Australia, Australia
International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics
Proceedings of International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics (HOPV16)
Swansea, United Kingdom, 2016 June 29th - July 1st
Organizers: James Durrant, Henry Snaith and David Worsley
Oral, Ivan Kassal, presentation 057
Publication date: 28th March 2016

Although organic heterojunctions can separate charges with near-unity efficiency and on a sub-picosecond timescale, the full details of the charge-separation process remain unclear. In typical models, the Coulomb binding between the electron and the hole can exceed the thermal energy kBT by an order of magnitude, making it impossible for the charges to separate before recombining. Here, we consider the entropic contribution to charge separation in the presence of disorder and find that even modest amounts of disorder have a decisive effect, reducing the charge-separation barrier to about kBT or eliminating it altogether. Therefore, the charges are usually not thermodynamically bound at all and could separate spontaneously if the kinetics otherwise allowed it, i.e., if the hopping frequency is high compared to the recombination rate. Our conclusion holds despite the worst-case assumption of localised, thermalised carriers, and is only strengthened if mechanisms like delocalisation or 'hot' states are also present and drive the barrier down even further.



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