Correlation of nanomorphology with structural and spectroscopic studies in organic solar cells

The nanomorphology of bulk heterojunction (BHJ) blends based on poly[[4,8-bis[(2-ethylhexyl)oxy]benzo[1,2-b:4,5-b′]dithiophene-2,6-diyl][3-fluoro-2-[(2-ethylhexyl)carbonyl]thieno[3,4-b]thiophenediyl]] (PTB7) blended with [6,6]-phenyl-C71-butyric acid methyl ester (PC71BM) is systematically varied by using the volume fraction of the solvent additive 1,8-diiodooctane (DIO) from 0 to 20 vol % in chlorobenzene to prepare organic solar cells (OSCs). Blends prepared without DIO forms large phase-separated domains of PC71BM which are suppressed on addition of 3 vol % DIO, resulting in improved nanoscale features. Addition of 20 vol % DIO results in a finer interconnected morphology along with increased roughness due to polymer aggregation, which contrasts with previous reports. With increase in addition of DIO the photoluminescence (PL) from the blend is reduced; however, a relative increase in PL from 750 nm onward is observed for blends with 20 vol % DIO. As quenching of the blend PL is related to the donor/acceptor interface, structural characterizations in real-space (microscopy) and k-space (scattering) are performed to unravel the nanomorphology and correlate it with photophysical and charge transport processes. Electron-transport length scales measured by scanning photocurrent microscopy are found to increase with the addition of up to 3 vol % DIO associated with the breakup of the large PC71BM agglomerates, while the hole-transport length is found to increase on adding DIO up to 20 vol % due to aggregation of polymer chains. Hence, this work represents a unique set of results systematically examining the effect of nanomorphology on structural and solar cells properties of BHJ blends, which can have a direct implication on better understanding of the emerging high-efficiency OSC systems.