Doping-induced efficiency enhancement in organic photovoltaic devices

Performance of organic photovoltaic (OPV) devices is dramatically enhanced by doping suitable fluorescent dyes into the donor and/or acceptor layers. By doping rubrene into standard CuPc/C-60 OPV cell, a high J(SC) of 30.1 mA/cm(2), V-OC of 0.58 V, and an exceptionally high power conversion efficiency of 5.58% are achieved. The performance improvement is mainly attributed to efficient light absorption by rubrene in the range of 460-530 nm where two hosts have low absorbance, leading to more effective exciton formation. Their findings motivate the use of fluorescent dyes for maximizing absorption spectral coverage as well as increasing photon harvesting.