Photogenerated charge carrier transport and recombination in polyfluorene/fullerene bilayer and blend photovoltaic devices

Using extraction of photogenerated charge carriers by linearly increasing voltage (photo-CELIV), we investigated two key transport parameters in photovoltaic materials based on the donor APFO-3 and acceptor PCBM: the mobility and lifetime of photogenerated charge carriers, in bilayers of varying geometry and in blends with various acceptors loading. We find that mobility depends strongly on delay time for shorter delay time in all devices. The observed recombination kinetics is found to be monomolecular. The mean lifetime of charge carriers is 2–3 μs in blends and is slightly greater than 4 μs in bilayer devices. In addition, the implications of mobility and lifetime values on the collection efficiency of the devices are presented.