This work studies the charge carrier collection efficiency in organic bulk-heterojunction solar cells based on polymer:fullerene blends. An equivalent circuit with a specific recombination term is proposed to describe the behavior of this type of devices. It is experimentally shown that this recombination term determines the slope of the current–voltage characteristic at the short-circuit condition. The variation of this dynamic resistance with the light intensity can be interpreted considering a dominant first-order recombination process. Finally, an analytical model under a constant electric field approximation is presented that can be used to calculate the charge carrier collection efficiency of the device. This model can be also used to estimate an effective mobility–lifetime product, which is characteristic of the quality of the active layer.

Peer Reviewed