Theoretical study on mesoscopic-size impurity effects in the charge separation process of organic photocells

Abstract

A bulk-heterojunction structure is often employed to develop high-performance organic photocells, in which the donor and acceptor regions are complexly intertwined. In such situations, mesoscopic-scale islands and peninsulas that compose the donor materials may be formed in the acceptor region. Alternatively, the donor region may extend deeply into the acceptor region. This yields mesoscopic-size impurities that can create obstacles in the charge separation (exciton dissociation) process of organic photocells and prevents the dissociation of excitons (electron–hole pairs). We previously reported on the effect of the cooperative behavior between the hot charge transfer (CT) state and the dimensional (entropy) effect on the charge separation process. In this paper, we discuss the mesoscopic-scale impurity effect on the charge separation process in PCBM acceptor models by considering the hot CT state and dimensional effects. In addition, we discuss atomic-scale effects such as molecular distortions and conformation changes using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations.