Efficiency of bulk-heterojunction organic solar cells

During the last years the performance of bulk heterojunction solar cells has been improved significantly. For a large-scale application of this technology further improvements are required. This article reviews the basic working principles and the state of the art device design of bulk heterojunction solar cells. The importance of high power conversion efficiencies for the commercial exploitation is outlined and different efficiency models for bulk heterojunction solar cells are discussed. Assuming state of the art materials and device architectures several models predict power conversion efficiencies in the range of 10-15%. A more general approach assuming device operation close to the Shockley-Queisser-limit leads to even higher efficiencies. Bulk heterojunction devices exhibiting only radiative recombination of charge carriers could be as efficient as ideal inorganic photovoltaic devices. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.