Reducing exciton binding energy by increasing thin film permittivity: an effective approach to enhance exciton separation efficiency in organic solar cells.

Photocurrent generation in organic solar cells requires that excitons, which are formed upon light absorption, dissociate into free carriers at the interface of electron acceptor and donor materials. The high exciton binding energy, arising from the low permittivity of organic semiconductor films, generally causes low exciton separation efficiency and subsequently low power conversion efficiency. We demonstrate here, for the first time, that the exciton binding energy in B,O-chelated azadipyrromethene (BO-ADPM) donor films is reduced by increasing the film permittivity by blending the BO-ADPM donor with a high dielectric constant small molecule, camphoric anhydride (CA). Various spectroscopic techniques, including impedance spectroscopy, photon absorption and emission spectroscopies, as well as X-ray spectroscopies, are applied to characterize the thin film electronic and photophysical properties. Planar heterojunction solar cells are fabricated with a BO-ADPM:CA film as the electron donor and C60 as the acceptor. With an increase in the dielectric constant of the donor film from ∼4.5 to ∼11, the exciton binding energy is reduced and the internal quantum efficiency of the photovoltaic cells improves across the entire spectrum, with an ∼30% improvement in the BO-ADPM photoactive region.