Charge-Carrier Mobility Requirements for Bulk Heterojunction Solar Cells with High Fill Factor and External Quantum Efficiency >90%

To increase the efficiency of bulk heterojunction (BHJ) solar cells beyond 15%, 300 nm thick devices with 0.8 fill factor (FF) and external quantum efficiency (EQE) >90% are likely needed. This work demonstrates that numerical device simulators are a powerful tool for investigating charge-carrier transport in BHJ devices and are useful for rapidly determining what semiconductor pro­perties are needed to reach these performance milestones. The electron and hole mobility in a BHJ must be ≈10−2 cm2 V−1 s−1 in order to attain a 0.8 FF in a 300 nm thick device with the recombination rate constant of poly(3-hexyl­thiophene):[6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (P3HT:PCBM). Thus, the hole mobility of donor polymers needs to increase from ≈10−4 to ≈10−2 cm2 V−1 s−1 in order to significantly improve device performance. Furthermore, the charge-carrier mobility required for high FF is directly proportional to the BHJ recombination rate constant, which demonstrates that decreasing the recombination rate constant could dramatically improve the efficiency of optically thick devices. These findings suggest that researchers should prioritize improving charge-carrier mobility when synthesizing new materials for BHJ solar cells and highlight that they should aim to understand what factors affect the recombination rate constant in these devices.