Physics Commons^™

Probing Charge Recombination In Organic Solar Cells, Ally C. Hurd, Awwad Alotaibi, Acacia Patterson, Obaid Alqahtani, James Doyle, Brian Akira Collins

Macalester Journal of Physics and Astronomy

Printable and flexible organic solar panels are promising sources of inexpensive, large-scale renewable energy, where panels can be manufactured by printing from polymer inks. There are some limitations to these types of solar cells, however. First, toxic halogenated solvents have historically been necessary to dissolve polymers to make the ink. In addition, organic solar cells typically have high rates of recombination, which limits their efficiency. Here, we use a transient photovoltage (TPV) technique to measure charge lifetimes in cells made from two different organic solvents. The first solvent is toxic, halogenated dichlorobenzene (DCB) which is typically used to make organic …