Owing to the low dielectric constant of organic materials, organic photovoltaic (OPV) is regarded as an excitonic solar cell that excitons are generated upon photo-excitation. Such intrinsic small dielectric constant (ε) in organic materials results in large exciton binding energy (Eb). That becomes a key detrimental factor limiting the further improvement in organic photovoltaic cells. Increasing the material dielectric constant seems to be a straight-forward strategy to reduce the strong coulombic attraction of the photo-generated electron-hole pairs. Despite the matter of importance, there are limited reports in measuring the Eb and ε in organic photovoltaic materials and the correlation between the dielectric constant and the exciton binding energy is unclear. Here, we extend our demonstration by using quantum efficiency measurement [1] and electro-absorption to access the transporting gap and exciton binding energy in pristine organic photovoltaic materials for polymeric donor, fullerene and non-fullerene small molecular acceptors. It is found that Eb varies from 0.3 eV to 1.2 eV in those prototypical materials and it apparently follows a second power law with the inverse of the dielectric constant of the materials, i.e. Eb ∝ 1 / ε2. Instead of widely assumed first-order dependence, this second order dependent relationship is firstly reported. Interestingly, we have also found that the binding energy is more dependent on the molecular-molecular interaction rather than the intrinsic properties of single molecule. In this presentation, we will also demonstrate how the higher dielectric material benefits the exciton dissociation at donor/acceptor interface.
[1]: Ho-Wa Li, Zhiqiang Guan, Yuanhang Cheng, Taili Liu, Qingdan Yang, Chun-Sing Lee, Song Chen, Sai-Wing Tsang, On the Study of Exciton Binding Energy with Direct Charge Generation in Photovoltaic Polymers, Adv. Electron. Mater., 2016, 2 (11), 1600200.
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