Extraction of poly (3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) properties from dark current voltage characteristics in a P3HT/n-crystalline-silicon solar cell

Abstract

The dark current-voltage characteristics of poly (3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT)/n-type crystalline silicon solar cells were analyzed using an electrical equivalent circuit. We found that without illumination transport occurs due to hopping between localized states at the P3HT/silicon interface not only at low voltages, through multitunneling capture emission, but also at medium voltages, through tunneling-enhanced recombination. At high voltages the current is limited by series resistance and space-charge limited mechanisms. At low reverse voltages the current is limited by shunt resistance. From the temperature dependence of the equivalent circuit’s fitting parameters, we were able to estimate some physical parameters of the P3HT layer, namely the electron affinity, the charge carrier concentration and the characteristic temperature of the exponential trap distribution. The extracted P3HT values are in good agreement with previously reported values obtained using different methods but our approach takes into account that the P3HT layer is in a solar cell.