TY - GEN
T1 - Charge separation and minority carrier injection in P3HT-silicon heterojunction solar cells
AU - Avasthi, Sushobhan
AU - Sturm, James C.
PY - 2011
Y1 - 2011
N2 - In this work we investigate the behavior of carrier absorption and minority carrier injection in heterojunction solar cells fabricated by spin-coating the organic semiconductor poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) on n-type crystalline silicon. Using this structure we recently demonstrated a device with open-circuit voltage (V OC) of 0.59 V and short-circuit currents (I SC) of 22 mA/cm 2 at AM 1.5 conditions [1-2]. In this paper we show, using capacitance-voltage characteristics, that there is a large depletion region in silicon which is responsible for the separation of photogenerated carriers. Furthermore, by measuring minority carrier storage times, we show that the dominant forward-bias dark-current component in these devices is the injection of minority carriers from the anode, through P3HT, in to silicon. This confirms that P3HT functions as a p-type heterojunction contact to silicon that blocks electrons but not holes, explaining the high V OC we observe.
AB - In this work we investigate the behavior of carrier absorption and minority carrier injection in heterojunction solar cells fabricated by spin-coating the organic semiconductor poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) on n-type crystalline silicon. Using this structure we recently demonstrated a device with open-circuit voltage (V OC) of 0.59 V and short-circuit currents (I SC) of 22 mA/cm 2 at AM 1.5 conditions [1-2]. In this paper we show, using capacitance-voltage characteristics, that there is a large depletion region in silicon which is responsible for the separation of photogenerated carriers. Furthermore, by measuring minority carrier storage times, we show that the dominant forward-bias dark-current component in these devices is the injection of minority carriers from the anode, through P3HT, in to silicon. This confirms that P3HT functions as a p-type heterojunction contact to silicon that blocks electrons but not holes, explaining the high V OC we observe.
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U2 - 10.1109/PVSC.2011.6186450
DO - 10.1109/PVSC.2011.6186450
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84861017882
SN - 9781424499656
T3 - Conference Record of the IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference
SP - 2487
EP - 2489
BT - Program - 37th IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, PVSC 2011
T2 - 37th IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, PVSC 2011
Y2 - 19 June 2011 through 24 June 2011
ER -