Understanding effects of TCO work function on the performance of organic solar cells by numerical simulation

TL;DR

This study uses numerical simulation to analyze how the work function of transparent conducting oxides affects key performance metrics of organic solar cells, providing insights for optimizing contact materials.

Contribution

It offers a detailed simulation-based analysis of TCO work function effects on organic solar cell performance, highlighting critical values for contact optimization.

Findings

Open circuit voltage increases with TCO work function for non-Ohmic contacts.

Fill factor varies with electrode work function, decreasing below a critical value.

Simulation results guide TCO contact selection for better organic solar cell efficiency.

Abstract

The influences of work function of transparent conducting oxides (TCO) on the per-formance of organic solar cells, including open circuit voltage, conversion efficiency and fill factor, has been simulated. It is obtained that for non-Ohmic contact the open circuit voltage and conversion efficiency increase monotonically with the TCO work function but keep constant for Ohmic contact. Fill factor decreases and increases with the electrode work function when the electrode work function is below and above a critical value (4.2 eV for TCO and 4.5 eV for back-contact), respectively. The results of this simulation are significant in the choice of TCO contacts to optimize organic planar heterojunction solar cells.