Advanced Functional Materials and Devices (AFMD) Group

Abstract:

Organic solar cells demonstrate external quantum efficiencies and fill factors approaching those of conventional photovoltaic technologies. However, as compared with the optical gap of the absorber materials, their open-circuit voltage is much lower, largely due to the presence of significant non-radiative recombination. Here, we study a large data set of published and new material combinations and find that non-radiative voltage losses decrease with increasing charge-transfer-state energies. This observation is explained by considering non-radiative charge-transfer-state decay as electron transfer in the Marcus inverted regime, being facilitated by a common skeletal molecular vibrational mode. Our results suggest an intrinsic link between non-radiative voltage losses and electron-vibration coupling, indicating that these losses are unavoidable. Accordingly, the theoretical upper limit for the power conversion efficiency of single-junction organic solar cells would be reduced to about 25.5% and the optimal optical gap increases to 1.45–1.65 eV, that is, 0.2–0.3 eV higher than for technologies with minimized non-radiative voltage losses.

Abstract:

Etching with atomic hydrogen, as a preparation step before the high-temperature growth process of graphene onto a thin 3C-SiC film grown on Si(111), greatly improves the structural quality of topmost graphene layers. Pit formation and island coalescence, which are typical of graphene growth by SiC graphitization, are quenched and accompanied by widening of the graphene domain sizes to hundreds of nanometers, and by a significant reduction in surface roughness down to a single substrate bilayer. The surface reconstructions expected for graphene and the underlying layer are shown with atomic resolution by scanning tunnelling microscopy. Spectroscopic features typical of graphene are measured by core-level photoemission and Raman spectroscopy.

Abstract:

A method for resolving the diffusion length of excitons and the extraction yield of charge carriers is presented based on the performance of organic bilayer solar cells and careful modeling. The technique uses a simultaneous variation of the absorber thickness and the excitation wavelength. Rigorously differing solar cell structures as well as independent photoluminescence quenching measurements give consistent results.