Photoconductivity in donor-acceptor heterojunction organic photovoltaics

Organic photovoltaics (OPVs) differ from ideal inorganic solar cells due to their pronounced voltage dependence under reverse bias. This feature is commonly modeled in an ad hoc fashion by including a parallel junction resistance (Rₚ) that bypasses the heterojunction energy barrier between donor and acceptor. The existence of a finite Rₚ has variously been attributed to rough interfaces, pinhole defects, or to the electric field dependence of the dissociation of polaron pairs that are bound at the heterojunction. Here we show that the voltage dependence of the photocurrent can also arise from photoconductivity resulting from exciton generation followed by dissociation into free polarons within the bulk of the donor and acceptor layers. The presence of photoconductivity of the active layers does not result in an increase in power conversion efficiency, and places a constraint on the maximum fill factor that can be achieved in an OPV cell.