Comparison of recombination models in organic bulk heterojunction solar cells

Recombination in bulk-heterojunction (BHJ) organic solar cells is the key loss mechanism, and it directly affects characteristic parameters such as power conversion efficiency, short-circuit current, open-circuit voltage, and fill factor. However, which recombination mechanism dominates the loss in organic materials is unclear at present. In this work, we simulate state-of-art BHJ solar cells using five recombination models, including direct recombination, Langevin recombination, charge transfer state recombination, trap-assisted recombination, and recombination via tail. All processes are strongly dependent on charge carrier mobility and exhibit a similar recombination distribution in active layer. For high mobilities, all models present a similar behavior along with the increased mobilities, whereas, there are slight differences in open-circuit voltage between trap/tail model and other ones at lower mobilities, resulting from the interaction between photo-carriers and dark-carriers.