Series resistance in organic bulk-heterojunction solar devices: Modulating carrier transport with fullerene electron traps

Series resistance is one of the key parameters affecting the performance of organic photovoltaic devices. Several electronic mechanisms arising from different structures within the solar cell can contribute to increasing it. We focus on the series resistance origin by altering the acceptor transport properties trough the incorporation of fullerene traps located at energies below the transporting electron levels. Indene-C60 bisadduct as acceptor molecule blended with poly(3-hexylthiophene) forms the active layer in which small amounts of [6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester have been added as trapping sites. A complete analysis of the impedance response has allowed identifying bulk transport resistive circuit elements in the high-frequency part of the spectra. Series resistance is observed to be dependent on the concentration of fullerene traps, thus indicating a connection between bulk transport processes and resistive elements. By comparing different contacts it has been discarded that outer cathode interfaces influence the series resistance experimentally extracted from impedance spectroscopy.

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► Series resistance in BHJ devices is extracted from high-frequency impedance response.
► Electron conductivity is modulated by incorporating fullerene traps.
► Contact effects play a minor role in series resistance for polymer:fullerene cells.