Sensitivity analysis of current generation in organic solar cells—comparing bilayer, sawtooth, and bulk heterojunction morphologies

Organic solar cells (OSC) show great potential as a low-cost energy source. In addition, their mechanical flexibility allows the added advantage of use on a wide variety of surfaces. In recent years, progress in experimental strategies and modeling approaches have enabled enhancing the power conversion efficiencies of OSC. In particular, simulation based analysis has played a significant role in improving our understanding of the charge transport phenomena in the active layer of these devices. The excitonic drift-diffusion (EDD) model has been used widely to simulate the generation and transport properties of bulk heterojunction (BHJ) solar cells. The EDD model – which is derived from the Boltzmann transport is dependent on a number of input parameters such as (1) material properties (mobility and permittivity), (2) operating conditions (illumination and device thickness), and (3) active layer morphology.A comprehensive sensitivity analysis of the short-circuit current, Jsc, to the input parameters is performed. This helps in rank ordering the input parameters and operating conditions – by strength and relevance – on their impact on Jsc. We particularly focus our investigations on understanding how the active layer morphology affects the sensitivity of Jsc. To accomplish this we analyze three classes of morphologies: bilayer, BHJ, and sawtooth. The results show significant differences in sensitivities between BHJ, sawtooth, and bilayer morphologies. Short-circuit current in BHJ structure shows higher sensitivity to material properties than either sawtooth and bilayer structure, suggesting that the necessity for finer control of material properties to counteract the increased disorder in the active layer morphology. The electrode current is found to be most sensitive to illumination intensity for all three morphologies. We report some interesting trends that may help choose the most sensitive parameters to vary for designing OSC's with better performance.

► We perform sensitivity analysis for short-circuit current in organic solar cells.
► We examine the effect of disorder in active layer morphology on sensitivity.
► Sensitivity to material properties increases with disorder in morphology.
► Sensitivity to device thickness decreases with disorder in morphology.