Structure-induced resonant tail-state regime absorption in polymer: fullerene bulk-heterojunction solar cells

Abstract

In this work, we present resonant tail-state regime absorption enhanced organic photovoltaics. We combine periodically structured ${\mathrm{TiO}}_{2}$ bottom electrodes with P3HT-PCBM bulk-heterojunction solar cells in an inverted device configuration. The wavelength-scale patterns are transferred to the electron-selective bottom electrodes via direct laser interference patterning, a fast method compatible with roll-to-roll processing. Spectroscopic and optoelectronic device measurements suggest polarization-dependent absorption enhancement along with photocurrent generation unambiguously originating from the population of tail states. We discuss the effects underlying these absorption patterns with the help of electromagnetic simulations using the discontinuous Galerkin time domain method. For this, we focus on the total absorption spectra along with spatially resolved power loss densities. Our simulations stress the tunability of the absorption resonances towards arbitrary wavelength regions.