Optical studies of the charge transfer complex in polythiophene/fullerene blends for organic photovoltaic applications

We studied the photophysics of regioregular polythiophene/C-61 (RR-P3HT/PCBM) blend films utilized for organic photovoltaic applications using the femtosecond transient and steady-state photomodulation techniques with above-gap and below-gap pump excitations and electroabsorption spectroscopy. We provide strong evidence for the existence of charge transfer complex (CTC) state in the blend that is formed deep inside the optical gap of the polymer and fullerene constituents, which is clearly revealed in the electroabsorption spectrum with an onset at 1.2 eV. We identify this midgap band as the lowest lying CTC state formed at the interfaces separating the polymer and fullerene phases. With above-gap pump excitation the primary photoexcitations in the blend are excitons and polarons in the polymer domains that are generated within the experimental time resolution (150 fs), having distinguishable photoinduced absorption (PA) bands in the mid-IR. The photogenerated excitons subsequently decay within similar to 10 ps, consistent with the polymer weak photoluminescence in the blend. In contrast, with below-gap pump excitation, a new PA band in the mid-IR is generated within our time resolution, which is associated with photogenerated species that decay into polarons at much later times; also no PA of excitons is observed. We interpret the photoexcitations as CT excitons, which with below-gap pump excitation are resonantly generated on the CTC states at the interfaces, as the first step for polaron generation, without involving intrachain excitons in the polymer phase. We found that the polarons generated with below-gap pump excitation are trapped at the interfaces with relatively long lifetime, and thus may generate polarons on the polymer chains and fullerene molecules with a different mechanism than with above-gap excitation. In any case the interfacial polarons generated with below-gap excitation do not substantially contribute to the photocurrent density in photovoltaic applications because of the relatively thin active layer using the traditional bulk heterojunctions design. This is shown by comparing the charge photogeneration efficiency spectrum measured on a fabricated photovoltaic solar cell with the polaron photogeneration action spectrum measured on a thick blend film.