Guidelines for Material Design in Semitransparent Organic Solar Cells

Forberich K, Troisi A, Liu C, Wagner M, Brabec CJ, Egelhaaf HJ (2024)

Publication Type: Journal article

Publication year: 2024

Journal

Advanced Functional Materials Wiley-VCH Verlag

DOI: 10.1002/adfm.202314116

Abstract

Organic solar cells (OSCs) are uniquely suited for semitransparent applications due to their adjustable absorption spectrum. However, most high-performance semitransparent cells reported to date are based on materials that have shown high power conversion efficiency for opaque devices. A model is therefore presented to assess the optimum efficiency and transparency for a specific donor and acceptor bandgap. The absorption characteristics of both donor and acceptor are modeled with spectral data of typical absorber materials from the literature which are adjusted to achieve the desired bandgap value. The results show three distinct regions of high light utilization efficiency (LUE) if the photopic curve is employed as a weighting function (corresponding to window applications), and a broad maximum for the plant action spectrum as a weighting function (corresponding to greenhouse applications). When comparing these findings to reported experimental values, it is evident that the bandgaps of the materials used for the experimental studies do not correspond to the maxima identified by the simulation model. The analysis of the energy levels of molecules recorded in the literature confirms that all bandgaps and therefore all LUE maxima are chemically feasible so that the performance of semitransparent OSCs can be further improved by designing materials with optimized absorption spectra.

Authors with CRIS profile

Christoph Brabec

Involved external institutions

Forschungszentrum Jülich / Research Centre Jülich (FZJ) DE Germany (DE) The University of Liverpool GB United Kingdom (GB)

How to cite

APA:

Forberich, K., Troisi, A., Liu, C., Wagner, M., Brabec, C.J., & Egelhaaf, H.J. (2024). Guidelines for Material Design in Semitransparent Organic Solar Cells. Advanced Functional Materials. https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/adfm.202314116

MLA:

Forberich, Karen, et al. "Guidelines for Material Design in Semitransparent Organic Solar Cells." Advanced Functional Materials (2024).

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