Monte Carlo modeling of geminate recombination in polymer-polymer photovoltaic devices

Abstract

A Monte Carlo model is used to examine geminate pair dissociation in polymer-polymer photovoltaic devices. It is found that increasing one or both carrier mobilities aids geminate separation yield eta(GS) particularly at low fields. This, in turn, leads to improved maximum power output from polymer-polymer blend photovoltaics, even when carrier mobilities are unbalanced by a factor of 10. The dynamic behaviors of geminate charges that eventually separate and recombine are examined for the first time. It is shown that geminate pairs in a bilayer become effectively free when separated by approximately 4 nm, which is far smaller than the thermal capture radius of 16 nm here. This may lead one to expect that eta(GS) would not be limited by the separation allowed by the morphology once the domain size has increased above 4 nm. In fact it is found that eta(GS) in a blend improves continuously as the average domain size increases from 4 to 16 nm. We show that although a small degree of separation may be available in a blend, the limited number of possible routes to further separation makes charge pairs in blends more susceptible to recombination than charge pairs in a bilayer.