Proceedings of Online International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics (OnlineHOPV20)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29363/nanoge.onlinehopv.2020.019
Publication date: 22nd May 2020
The traditional concept for organic solar cells (OSC) suggests an offset in energy levels (Eoffset) to provide sufficient driving force to split excitons into free charge carriers. Eoffset is a most important Key performance Indicator (KPI), as a low Eoffset increases the open-circuit voltage (VOC), however, may also lead to a poor charge generation efficiency. Understand the factors limiting device operation at very small Eoffset is therefore of outmost importance. In this presentation we show that exciton splitting in highly efficient NFA systems at negligible EHOMO, offset still takes place, but on ultra-long timescales, even exceeding the exciton lifetime, which obviously becomes the ultimate limit for efficient systems. Moreover, we analyze the voltage losses and surprisingly, in systems where no charge transfer state is detected, we show that the non-radiative voltage losses still correlate with the small but non-negligible EHOMO offset until reaching the pristine materials´ limit.