Correlation between charge carriers mobility and nanomorphology in a blend of P3HT/PCBM bulk heterojunction solar cell: Impact on recombination mechanisms

Sandwich configurations consisting of hole-only and electron-only devices are employed to study the transport properties of polymer/fullerene blended material. Upon thermal annealing at 150 °C and subsequent device characterisations a direct correlation between solar cell device power conversion efficiency and charge carrier mobilities is identified. The highest power conversion efficiency reported herein resulted from the electron to hole mobility ratio of 4.78. This ratio further reduces to 0.357 at 175 °C as a result of the deterioration of electron mobility at the same time as enhancement in hole carrier mobility with no further improvement in PCE. Effects of thermal annealing on trap density reveal that the trap assisted recombination is more dominant as compared to the bimolecular recombination. Furthermore such a mechanism enhances as a result of increasing trap density at higher annealing temperatures. The effect of light intensity on the open circuit voltage VOC further verifies that the dominant recombination process is through trap assisted recombination.