| The performance of organic photovoltaics is severely limited by poor exciton dissociation and charge transport due in part to high rates of exciton recombination and low charge mobilities in polymers. This challenge can be partially overcome through the use of blended and layered heterojunctions. Such morphologies offer multiple exciton dissociation sites and separate charge pathways, thus limiting exciton recombination, and allowing for thicker, more absorbing, polymer films.; I have performed photovoltaic device characterization and time-resolved and steady-state photoluminescence on a variety of donor-acceptor heterojunction. I have used these methods to understand excited state dynamics and how they affect device performance.; As hole-transporters I use a derivative of poly-phenylene-vinylene (M3EH-PPV) and poly-3-hexylthiophene (P3HT). As electron-transporters I use the metal oxide titanium dioxide (TiO2), the electron-transporter CN-PPV, and a fullerene derivative (PCBM). These materials are layered and blended together to form donor-acceptor heterojunctions. All heterojunctions result in enhanced device performance, and 1:4 M3EH-PPV:PCBM resulted in the highest efficiencies.; M3EH-PPV emission is characterized by single-chain excitations, and the decay is dominated by short components of 0.20 and 0.45 ns. CN-ether-PPV is dominated by interchain excited state species---ie., excimers---with a decay time of 14.0 ns. The broken conjugation imposed by the ether group affect the excited state, resulting in an excited state species that is particularly vulnerable to quenching. This has important ramifications for material design.; Hole-transporting polymers blended and layered with CN-ether-PPV have high currents (Jsc up to 3.3 mA/cm2) and good quenching relative to CN-ether-PPV (∼90%) due to charge separation and generation, respectively. Hole-transporters blended with PCBM result in efficient devices (Jsc up to 14 mA/cm2) due to rapid charge transfer and the existence of charge percolation pathways caused by the presence of aggregates of PCBM. The size of the aggregates affects charge transport, and is highly dependent upon film processing and blend ratio.; The best device performance does not necessarily correlate with the excited state lifetime, however. Morphological differences, such as charge pathways that enable efficient charge transport, often outweigh the effect of charge transfer. Suggestions for improvement of nanoscale morphology are given. |
