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Monte Carlo modeling of geminate recombination in polymer-polymer photovoltaic devices

Groves, C.; Marsh, R.A.; Greenham, N.C.

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Authors

R.A. Marsh

N.C. Greenham



Abstract

A Monte Carlo model is used to examine geminate pair dissociation in polymer-polymer photovoltaic devices. It is found that increasing one or both carrier mobilities aids geminate separation yield ηGS particularly at low fields. This, in turn, leads to improved maximum power output from polymer-polymer blend photovoltaics, even when carrier mobilities are unbalanced by a factor of 10. The dynamic behaviors of geminate charges that eventually separate and recombine are examined for the first time. It is shown that geminate pairs in a bilayer become effectively free when separated by ∼4nm, which is far smaller than the thermal capture radius of 16nm here. This may lead one to expect that ηGS would not be limited by the separation allowed by the morphology once the domain size has increased above 4nm. In fact it is found that ηGS in a blend improves continuously as the average domain size increases from 4to16nm. We show that although a small degree of separation may be available in a blend, the limited number of possible routes to further separation makes charge pairs in blends more susceptible to recombination than charge pairs in a bilayer.

Citation

Groves, C., Marsh, R., & Greenham, N. (2008). Monte Carlo modeling of geminate recombination in polymer-polymer photovoltaic devices. The Journal of Chemical Physics, 129(11), Article 114903. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.2977992

Journal Article Type Article
Publication Date Sep 17, 2008
Deposit Date Apr 3, 2014
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Journal of Chemical Physics
Print ISSN 0021-9606
Electronic ISSN 1089-7690
Publisher American Institute of Physics
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 129
Issue 11
Article Number 114903
DOI https://doi.org/10.1063/1.2977992
Keywords Pair dissociation, Solar-cells, Separation, Mechanism, Blends.

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Copyright Statement
© 2008 American Institute of Physics. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics. The following article appeared in The Journal of Chemical Physics 129, 114903 (2008); doi: 10.1063/1.2977992
and may be found at http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/jcp/129/11/10.1063/1.2977992





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