A simulation study on p-doping level of polymer host material in P3HT: PCBM bulk heterojunction solar cells

doi:10.1088/1674-1056/26/4/048802

Abstract In this study, we investigate the influence of doping on the charge transfer and device characteristics parameters in the bulk heterojunction solar cells based on poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) and a methanofullerene derivative (PCBM). Organic semiconductors are also known to be not pure and they have defects and impurities, some of them are being charged and act as p-type or n-type dopants. Calculations of the solar cell characteristics parameters versus the p-doping level have been done at three different n-dopings (N_d) that consist of 5×10¹⁷ cm^-3, 10¹⁸ cm^-3, and 5×10¹⁸ cm^-3. We perform the analysis of the doping concentration through the drift-diffusion model, and calculate the current and voltage doping dependency. We find that at three different n-dopant levels, optimum p-type doping is about N_p=6×10¹⁸ cm^-3. Simulation results have shown that by increasing doping level, V_oc monotonically increases by doping. Cell efficiency reaches its maximum at somewhat higher doping as FF has its peak at N_p=3×10¹⁸ cm^-3. Moreover, this paper demonstrates that the optimum value for the p-doping is about N_p=6×10¹⁸ cm^-3 and optimum value for n-dopant is N_d=10¹⁸ cm^-3, respectively. The simulated results confirm that doping considerably affects the performance of organic solar cells.

Keywords: organic photovoltaics charge transport doping finite difference method

Received: 01 February 2016
Revised: 26 November 2016
Accepted manuscript online:

PACS:	88.40.jr	(Organic photovoltaics)
	91.60.Tn	(Transport properties)
	61.72.-y	(Defects and impurities in crystals; microstructure)
	02.70.Bf	(Finite-difference methods)

Corresponding Authors: Hossein Movla
E-mail: h.movla@azaraytash.com

Cite this article:

Hossein Movla, Mohammad Babazadeh A simulation study on p-doping level of polymer host material in P3HT: PCBM bulk heterojunction solar cells 2017 Chin. Phys. B 26 048802

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A simulation study on p-doping level of polymer host material in P3HT: PCBM bulk heterojunction solar cells

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