Origin of the Open Circuit Voltage of Plastic Solar Cells

Polymer solar cells with enhanced open-circuit voltage and efficiency

Following the development of the bulk heterojunction1 structure, recent years have seen a dramatic improvement in the efficiency of polymer solar cells. Maximizing the open-circuit voltage in a low-bandgap polymer is one of the critical factors towards enabling high-efficiency solar cells. Study of the relation between open-circuit voltage and the energy levels of the donor/acceptor2 in bulk he...

Open-Circuit Voltage Physics in Amorphous Silicon Solar Cells

We have performed computer calculations to explore effects of the p/i interface on the opencircuit voltage in a-Si:H based pin solar cells. The principal conclusions are that interface limitation can occur for values of VOC significantly below the built-in potential VBI of a cell, and that the effects can be understood in terms of thermionic emission of electrons from the intrinsic layer into t...

Generalized Analysis of the Illumination Intensity vs. Open-Circuit Voltage Decay of Solar Cells

A new technique to determine the current-voltage characteristics of solar cells based on simultaneously measuring the open-circuit voltage as a function of a slowly varying light intensity has been proposed recently (Sinton and Cuevas, 2000). This paper presents a detailed theoretical analysis and interpretation of such quasisteady-state Voc measurements (QssVoc). The ability of this analysis t...

Nanostructured hybrid solar cells: dependence of the open circuit voltage on the interfacial composition.

Inverted polymer solar cells [ 1 , 2 ] fabricated using transparent metal oxide cathodes have received signifi cant attention due to their potential for improved lifetime and performance compared to conventionally structured organic solar cells. [ 3 ] An additional attractive feature of this design is that low temperature, solution processed metal oxides can be employed allowing for compatibili...

Can morphology tailoring improve the open circuit voltage of organic solar cells?