Charge transport and exciton dissociation in organic solar cells consisting of dipolar donors mixed with C70

We investigate dipolar donor materials mixed with a C-70 acceptor in an organic photovoltaic (OPV) cell. Dipolar donors that have donor-acceptor-acceptor (d-a-a') structure result in high conductivity pathways due to close coupling between neighboring molecules in the mixed films. We analyze the charge transfer properties of the dipolar donor:C-70 mixtures and corresponding neat donors using a combination of time-resolved electroluminescence from intermolecular polaron pair states and conductive tip atomic force microscopy, from which we infer that dimers of the d-a-a' donors tend to form a continuous network of nanocrystalline clusters within the blends. Additional insights are provided by quantum-mechanical calculations of hole transfer coupling and hopping rates between donor molecules using nearest-neighbor donor packing motifs taken from crystal structural data. The approximation using only nearest-neighbor interactions leads to good agreement between donor hole hopping rates and the conductive properties of the donor:C-70 blends. This represents a significant simplification from requiring details of the nano- and mesoscale morphologies of thin films to estimate their electronic characteristics. Using these dipolar donors, we obtain a maximum power conversion efficiency of 9.6 +/- 0.5% under 1 sun, AM1.5G simulated illumination for an OPV comprised of an active layer containing a dipolar donor mixed with C-70.