Optoelectronic Properties of Organic Semiconductors: Charge Generation and Recombination in Next-Generation Photovoltaic Devices

This book delves into the role of sub-gap states in organic semiconducting devices, highlighting their significance in enhancing their performance. With their lightweight, processability, and potential for low cost and low embodied energy production, organic semiconductors have gained attention for various applications, including solar cells, transistors, and light-emitting diodes. The book discusses the electro-optical phenomena in organic solar cells and presents a new method for measuring exciton diffusion lengths. It also reveals how mid-gap trap states contribute to charge generation and recombination, impacting the thermodynamic limit of organic photovoltaic devices. The book offers valuable insights into exciton generation, diffusion, and charge transfer state dissociation through cutting-edge experimental observations and theoretical arguments.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 105 pages
Publication date: 27 February 2022
Publisher: Springer Nature Switzerland AG

This comprehensive book delves into the realm of organic semiconductors, with a special emphasis on their utilization as photovoltaic devices. It addresses a fundamental and previously overlooked concept in the field of organic optoelectronics, namely the crucial role that sub-gap states play in the performance of organic semiconducting devices. From a technological perspective, organic semiconductor-based devices hold immense interest due to their lightweight, ease of processability, conformal flexibility, and the potential for low cost and low embodied energy production. Driven by these distinctive selling points, the performance of organic semiconductors has been the subject of extensive multidisciplinary study for over 60 years, resulting in steady advancements in applications such as solar cells, transistors, light-emitting diodes, and various sensors.

The book commences by providing a comprehensive review of the primary electro-optical phenomena in organic solar cells, introducing a novel method for measuring exciton diffusion lengths based on a device structure with a low quencher content. Furthermore, it uncovers how mid-gap trap states are a universal feature in organic semiconductor donor-acceptor blends, unexpectedly contributing to charge generation and recombination, and having a profound impact on the thermodynamic limit of organic photovoltaic devices.

Featuring cutting-edge experimental observations supported by robust and novel theoretical arguments, this book offers valuable new insights into the underlying dynamics of exciton generation and diffusion, charge transfer state dissociation, and indeed the ultimate fate of photogenerated free carriers. By exploring these critical aspects, the book provides a comprehensive understanding of the fundamental principles governing organic semiconducting devices, paving the way for future advancements in this rapidly evolving field.

Weight: 203g
Dimension: 235 x 155 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9783030931612
Edition number: 1st ed. 2022