Effect of the active layer thickness on the device performance of polymer solar cells having [60]PCBM and [70]PCBM as electron acceptor

Recently it has been shown that the use of [70]PCBM as electron acceptor in polymer solar cells can improve the current output of such devices because C-70 derivatives have a stronger and broader absorption compared to C-60 ones. In this work we studied the influence of the fullerene on the optical behaviour of the photoactive blend film of a polymer solar cell. We simulated the optical absorption of the active layer inside the device structure and we calculated the maximum achievable short circuit current density with the aim to correlate the variation of the optical constants to the output current of the device. Afterward, we realized several polymer solar cells and we proved the theoretical findings. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the European Material Research Society (E-MRS)