Electric field and mobility dependent first-order recombination losses in organic solar cells

The origin of photocurrent losses in the power-generating regime of organic solar cells (OSCs) remains a controversial topic, although recent literature suggests that the competition between bimolecular recombination and charge extraction determines the bias dependence of the photocurrent. Here the steady-state recombination dynamics is studied in bulk-heterojunction OSCs with different hole mobilities from short-circuit to maximum power point. It is shown that in this regime, in contrast to previous transient extracted charge and absorption spectroscopy studies, first-order recombination outweighs bimolecular recombination of photogenerated charge carriers. This study demonstrates that the first-order losses increase with decreasing slower carrier mobility, and attributes them to either mobilization of charges trapped at the donor:acceptor interface through the Poole–Frenkel effect, and/or recombination of photogenerated and injected charges. The dependence of both first-order and higher-order losses on the slower carrier mobility explains why the field dependence of OSC efficiencies has historically been attributed to charge-extraction losses