In organic semiconductor based bulk heterojunction solar cells, the presence of acceptor increases the formation of charge transfer (CT) excitons, thereby leading to higher exciton dissociation probabilities. In this work we used steady state electroabsorption (EA) measurements to probe the change in the nature of excitons as the blend composition of the solar cell active layer material is varied. We investigated blends of poly[(2,5-bis(2-hexyldecyloxy)phenylene)-alt-(5,6-difluoro-4,7-di(thiophen-2-yl)benzo[c]-[1,2,5]thiadiazole)] (PPDT2FBT) and (6,6)-Phenyl C71 butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM). Analysis of the EA spectra showed that in presence of fullerene based acceptor, like PCBM, CT characteristics of the excitons were modified, though, no new CT signature was observed in the blend. Enhancement in the CT characteristic in the blend was reflected in the photoluminescence (PL) measurements of the blends, where, PL quenching of $\sim$ 63\% was observed for 1\% PCBM. The quenching reaches saturation at about 20\% PCBM. However, efficiency of the device increased with PCBM percentage beyond 20\%. The maximum efficiency was obtained for the blend having 50\% PCBM, among the blend compositions studied in this work, indicating the optimum concentration of PCBM for best power conversion efficiency to be around that value. Comparing experimental results with simulations, the variation of the device efficiency with PCBM percentage was shown to be arising from multiple factors like increase in polarizability and dipole moment of excitons, and the efficiency of the carrier collection from the bulk of the active layer.
4,4′-bis[(N-carbazole) styryl] biphenyl (BSB4 or BSBCz) is one of the widely studied organic fluorescent materials for blue organic electroluminescent devices in the recent times. In this work, BSB4 is used as a guest material to construct the host-guest matrix for the emissive layer (EML) of a pure blue fluorescent organic light-emitting diode (OLED). A pure blue emission suitable for display application with a Commission Internationale de l’Eclairage (CIE) coordinate of (0.147, 0.070) is achieved by the blue-shift of the emission spectrum of the host-guest matrix from that of the pristine guest (BSB4) molecules. The optimization of OLED structures is carried out by considering (i) charge balance in the emissive layer for high exciton density, and (ii) optical interference of generated light in the organic layers for increased light outcoupling. A thorough comparative study on the use of different combinations of widely used hole and electron transport layers to obtain charge balance in the EML of the OLED, thereby enhancing the external quantum efficiency (EQE) is shown. Optical interference effects in the fabricated OLEDs are analyzed by optical simulation of each device structure by transfer matrix method (TMM). With the optimized device structures, we are able to overcome the 2% EQE limit that has been reported so far for blue fluorescent OLEDs with BSB4 as light emitting material and achieve a maximum EQE of 4.08%, which is near to the theoretical limit of EQE for fluorescent OLEDs.
Electroabsorption (EA) measurements can be used to identify the type of excitons contributing to the absorption spectra of semiconductors. However, the shape of the EA spectrum may vary depending on the mode of measurement due to the optical interference effects. Analysis without considering these effects may lead to erroneous conclusions. In this work, we present EA measurements and analysis for reflection mode measurements considering optical interference effects. We compared the inferences with transmission mode measurements and discuss the limitations. We identified the nature of excitons associated with each transition in the absorption spectrum of poly[(2,5-bis(2-hexyldecyloxy)-phenylene)-alt-(5,6-difluoro-4,7-di(thiophen-2-yl)benzo[c]-[1,2,5]-thiadiazole)] thin film from EA measurements. The bands at 1.89, 2.05, and 2.27 eV had a mixed nature consisting of charge transfer and Frenkel characteristics. Of these, the band at 2.05 eV showed the strongest charge transfer characteristic. From thickness dependent measurements, we showed that the interference effects increase with the thickness of the semiconductor layer. The nature of excitons, however, could still be deduced qualitatively from reflection mode EA measurements.
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