Space charge limitation on the response time of organic photodiodes

• Photoconduction of an organic bulk heterojunction at open circuit is limited by the maximum allowed space charge.
• At open circuit, the response time of the diode varies with the reciprocal square root of the illumination intensity.
• This response time can be interpreted as the lifetime of the slowest charge carrier.

The dynamic response of an organic bulk heterojunction photodiode to small changes in applied bias or light intensity is investigated as function of the intensity of a constant background illumination by means of photoimpedance and transient photocurrent measurements. For bias voltages close to the open circuit voltage we find that the response timescale with the square root of the light intensity. The results can be quantitatively explained in terms of a space charge limitation on the photocurrent as predicted by Goodman and Rose (J. Appl. Phys. 42, 2823 (1971)). The relaxation time of the diode at open circuit corresponds to the lifetime of the slowest charge carrier in the diode. This relaxation time is determined by the dielectric constant and the smallest of the two carrier mobilities in the bulk heterojunction. This illustrates the importance of balanced carrier mobilities for obtaining diodes with fast response time at low bias for e.g. imaging arrays.

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