Chemical engineering in the electronics industry: progress towards the rational design of organic semiconductor heterojunctions

We review the current status of heterojunction design for combinations of organic semiconductor materials, given its central role in affecting the device performance for electronic devices and solar cell applications. We provide an emphasis on recent progress towards the rational design of heterojunctions that may lead to higher performance of charge separation and mobility. We also play particular attention to the role played by computational approaches and its potential to help define the best choice of materials for solar cell development in the future. We report the current status of the field with respect to such goals.

► Design of the heterojunction in all-organic solar cells is a critical aspect of understanding and controlling charge transport characteristics.
► The use of multiscale computational approaches has an important role to play in heterojunction design.
► Ordered heterojunctions offer promising routes to finesse issues that impede charge transport in bulk heterojunctions.
► The future is likely to lay in the development of multi-junction devices where computational insight is likely to help guide experimental searches for optimal interface design.