Investigation of defects by admittance spectroscopy measurements in poly (3-hexylthiophene):(6,6)-phenyl C-61-butyric acid methyl ester organic solar cells degraded under air exposure

Electrical transport properties of poly (3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) (6,6)-phenyl C-61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) solar cells, with and without encapsulation, have been investigated and analyzed using admittance spectroscopy and capacitance voltage measurements at different temperatures. The admittance spectroscopy clearly reveals two defect states with activation energies of 53 and 100 meV, and a concentration ten times higher in the unencapsulated sample. These defects seem to have a strong effect on the charge transport and the solar cell performance when they are present with a high concentration, since they lead to a decrease of the mobility and also the short-circuit current and the efficiency. The origin of these defects has been assigned to reaction of the blend with O-2 which is also known to induce p-type doping in pure P3HT. In an attempt to understand the effect of these defects on the organic solar cell performance, modeling and simulation were carried out using the effective medium layer model and gave good agreement with the measurements results. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3658023]