Light Harvesting for Organic Photovoltaics

The field of organic photovoltaics has developed rapidly over the last 2 decades, and small solar cells with power conversion efficiencies of 13% have been demonstrated. Light absorbed in the organic layers forms tightly bound excitons that are split into free electrons and holes using heterojunctio...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Chemical reviews 2017-01, Vol.117 (2), p.796-837
Main Authors: Hedley, Gordon J, Ruseckas, Arvydas, Samuel, Ifor D. W
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acceptor materials
Devices
Electric power
Electrochemical Techniques - instrumentation
Electrodes
Electrons
Energy efficiency
Excitons
Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer
Harvesting
Heterojunctions
Light
Microwaves
Organic chemicals
Photovoltaic cells
Review
Solar cells
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The field of organic photovoltaics has developed rapidly over the last 2 decades, and small solar cells with power conversion efficiencies of 13% have been demonstrated. Light absorbed in the organic layers forms tightly bound excitons that are split into free electrons and holes using heterojunctions of electron donor and acceptor materials, which are then extracted at electrodes to give useful electrical power. This review gives a concise description of the fundamental processes in photovoltaic devices, with the main emphasis on the characterization of energy transfer and its role in dictating device architecture, including multilayer planar heterojunctions, and on the factors that impact free carrier generation from dissociated excitons. We briefly discuss harvesting of triplet excitons, which now attracts substantial interest when used in conjunction with singlet fission. Finally, we introduce the techniques used by researchers for characterization and engineering of bulk heterojunctions to realize large photocurrents, and examine the formed morphology in three prototypical blends.
ISSN:0009-2665
1520-6890
DOI:10.1021/acs.chemrev.6b00215