Singlet Exciton Lifetimes in Conjugated Polymer Films for Organic Solar Cells
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Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
The lifetime of singlet excitons in conjugated polymer films is a key factor taken into account during organic solar cell device optimization. It determines the singlet exciton diffusion lengths in polymer films and has a direct impact on the photocurrent generation by organic solar cell devices. However, very little is known about the material properties controlling the lifetimes of singlet excitons, with most of our knowledge originating from studies of small organic molecules. Herein, we provide a brief summary of the nature of the excited states in conjugated polymer films and then present an analysis of the singlet exciton lifetimes of 16 semiconducting polymers. The exciton lifetimes of seven of the studied polymers were measured using ultrafast transient absorption spectroscopy and compared to the lifetimes of seven of the most common photoactive polymers found in the literature. A plot of the logarithm of the rate of exciton decay vs. the polymer optical bandgap reveals a medium correlation between lifetime and bandgap, thus suggesting that the Energy Gap Law may be valid for these systems. This therefore suggests that small bandgap polymers can suffer from short exciton lifetimes, which may limit their performance in organic solar cell devices. In addition, the impact of film crystallinity on the exciton lifetime was assessed for a small bandgap diketopyrrolopyrrole co-polymer. It is observed that the increase of polymer film crystallinity leads to reduction in exciton lifetime and optical bandgap again in agreement with the Energy Gap Law.
Date Issued
2016-01-13
Date Acceptance
2016-01-05
Citation
Polymers, 2016, 8 (1)
ISSN
2073-4360
Publisher
MDPI
Journal / Book Title
Polymers
Volume
8
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Subjects
Science & Technology
Physical Sciences
Polymer Science
excited states
diffusion
energy gap law
non-radiative
ultrafast transient absorption spectroscopy
ENERGY-GAP LAW
PHOTOVOLTAIC BLENDS
CHARGE-TRANSFER
BULK HETEROJUNCTIONS
QUANTUM EFFICIENCY
DIFFUSION
GENERATION
MORPHOLOGY
DYNAMICS
PHOTOGENERATION
Publication Status
Published
OA Location
http://www.mdpi.com/2073-4360/8/1/14
Article Number
14
Date Publish Online
2016-01-13