Organic solar cells: Their developments and potentials

This paper aims to review the developments and the potentials of organic photovoltaic, which has caught the attention of researchers of optoelectronics. The paper briefly introduces the physics underlying organic photovoltaic devices of donor-acceptor interfaces. It examines a variety of materials and architectures that benefit the performance of the organic photovoltaic cell; along with the important photogeneration factors including the exciton diffusion length as well as charge transport, separation, and collection. The authors have reviewed the recent understanding of the mechanisms that govern these photocurrent generation steps and sketched out the search for alternative materials and device architectures. The review also discusses areas where active researches should be directed for cell efficiency improvement and outlines the issues to be resolved in order to speed up the commercialization. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.