Proceedings of 2015 3rd International Conference on Advances in Electrical Engineering
17-19 December, 2015, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Organic Solar Cells: Historical Developments and
Challenges
Md Meganur Rhaman
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Ahsanullah University of Science and Technology
Dhaka, Bangladesh
E-mail: mizan_aust@yahoo.com
Abstract- Organic Solar Cells (OSCs) represent a recent
photovoltaic (PV) technology that uses organic semiconductor
materials to convert sunlight into electric energy. OSCs have
recently shown significant attention due to their technological
advantages of flexibility, light weight, cost effective fabrication
and significant improvement in the power conversion efficiency.
But the efficiencies of OSCs are still lower than crystal or
inorganic silicon solar cells. By studying the photovoltaic
properties of organic solar cells it is possible to increase the cells
efficiency. If the efficiency can be raises to half of the inorganic
solar cell the production cost will be reduced to one-tenth. This
paper describes the historical back ground, present situation,
future prospectus and technological breakthrough of OSCs. Also
explain the long-term sustainability advantages of OSCs with
compared to inorganic photovoltaic technologies in terms of
energy payback time and CO2 emission.
Keywords-Photovoltaic; Organic; Inorganic; Silicon; Solar
Cell;
I. I NTRODUCTIO N
Organic solar cells are assured for low cost energy
production, but if only further developments in their design
and manufacture make them useful for real-world
applications. A photovoltaic (PV) device converts light
directly into electric current and voltage. Traditionally this is
done by forming a diode from the junction of two regions in
an inorganic semiconductor, one doped to be n-type and the
other p-type. An n-type semiconductor has a small fraction of
its atoms substituted with atoms one space over to the right on
the periodic table like phosphorus which have five valence
electrons. Similarly p-type has some atoms replaced by that
one space to the left like boron which have three valance
electrons. The dopants in the n-type have one more electron
than all their neighbours and readily give it up, while the p­
type dopants have one fewer electron and will accept
electrons. When the electrons donated from the n-type region
are accepted in the p-type region they form what's called the
depletion region. Due to the net build up of charge there is a
net electric field in this region. Semiconductors have "band
gaps" of allowed energies. The highest band that would be
filled at 0 K is called the valence band, while the next highest,
separated by some band gap of forbidden energies, is called
the conduction band. Because the conduction band is mostly
empty, the electrons that are in it can move relatively easily.
978-1-4673-9695-0/15/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE
MAMatin
Department of Glass and Ceramic Engineering
Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology
Dhaka, Bangladesh
E-mail: mmatin@gce.buet.ac.bd
When a photon with enough energy strikes an electron in a
semiconducting material it is excited into the conduction band.
At the junction of p- and n-type semiconductors the electron
and resulting positive hole would then accelerated apart due to
the electric field. The result is an electric potential and current
that is the output power.
Solar cells can now be made from single crystal, multi
crystal, amorphous, and ribbon silicon. Other materials that
have been widely studied but do not have large market shares
include CdTe, GaAs, Ge, and copper indium gallium (di)
selenide (CIGS). These other materials have mostly failed to
be widely commercialized (outside of niche markets like
space) because of their high cost. CdTe is an exception that
has recently emerged as a competitive technology [1]. But
even silicon based solar cells, currently the most cost efficient
that can be produced on a commercial scale, still have a rather
poor power to price ratio [2]. Solar will never be competitive
for large scale energy production until the price per kWh is
brought in line with those other sources. The cost of solar
energy is instead driven by the cost of the initial capital
investment. The "fuel" in this case is free. The cost then is
determined by the manufacturing cost of making the panels,
the installation cost, maintenance costs, and the lifetime over
which those costs can be amortized. However, even if the
price of these cells has been radically reduced, it is still too
much expensive and photovoltaic energy account for less than
0.1% of the total world energy production [3]. Previous
research estimates that only 0.1% of incident sun power can
meet the world's current energy needs using solar cells with
around 10% conversion efficiency
Organic Photovoltaic's (OPV) are one strategy for bringing
down the cost of solar energy. By replacing the crystalline
semiconductor with some sort of organic molecule the
manufacturing cost of solar cells might be brought down to the
same level as for making sheets of plastic, because that is what
they would be. Currently organic solar cells are significantly
less efficient than most inorganic solar cells (1-11% vs. 15-
40%), but it might still make sense to use them (organic solar
cell) even the efficiency is half of the inorganic solar cell they
could be produced one-tenth of production cost of electricity.
Fig. 1 shows the different types of solar cells efficiency record
from National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) chart
from the year of 1975 to 2015.
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 Proceedings of 2015 3rd International Conference on Advances in Electrical Engineering
17-19 December, 2015, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Fig. I NREL-Chart of power conversion efficiencies of best research solar cells from 1975 to 20IS for various photovoltaic technologies

II. ORGANIC SOLAR CELL Now that the basic electronic role of the donor and
acceptor materials has been established, consider their
The external behaviour of organic photovoltaic is same as
physical interaction. Because excitations will only separate
inorganic PVs, But the voltage and current are generated is
into charge carriers at the interface of the two materials, it is
quite different. The organic PV material is not crystalline, so
desirable to maximize the interface surface area to volume
there are not nice bands for the electrons and there isn't
ratio. This can be done by making very thin films of one
electric field to drive them. Because of that, when an excited
material on top of the other, by mixing the two materials
electron is created by incident light it will quickly
and forming what is known as a bulk heterojunction.
recombine with its hole unless something causes them to
separate before recombination can happen. For that reason
OPVs consist of two materials, one that electrons prefer and
another that holes prefer. Once the electron and hole are
separated into distinct materials, they can just diffuse apart
due to their respective concentration gradients. Thus there
are three roles that will need to be filled by the materials:
absorption of light in the visible spectrum, a semiconducting
material that will take the electrons (the acceptor), and a
semiconducting material that will take the holes (the donor).
The conducting materials must be semiconductors so that
the cell can maintain an output voltage and not just produce
photoconductivity. If the charge carriers are generated far
from the electrodes, the materials will also need to be
efficient charge conductors (long carrier lifetimes) so that
the charges are not lost before collection. Many material
combinations have been tried that fit these requirements.
They can be classified into three primary categories:
molecular, polymer and hybrid. Fig. 2 1llustration of the basic structure of an organic solar cell

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 Proceedings of 2015 3rd International Conference on Advances in Electrical Engineering
17-19 December, 2015, Dhaka, Bangladesh
In the construction of a working solar cell the organic layer
is just one of the necessary components. The device must
also be designed to efficiently get light in and charge out.
Fig. 2 show a basic schematic of OSCs [4]. On the side
where light will come from there is a transparent conducting
electrode. Indium tin oxide (ITO) is very commonly used
for this purpose. There is also often a glass substrate that
provides mechanical support. Anti-reflection coatings can
help minimize losses due to non-absorption. On the other,
dark side the electrode usually consists of a thin fihn of
metal (such as Au or AI) that has been evaporated in to the
device. Strategies have been developed for certain materials,
such as adding buffer layers, to solve this problem.
III. TECHNICAL DEVELOPME NT OF OSCS
It is highlighted that organic chemistry has a strong
development since 1965. The most attractive features of
chemistry are that they discovered the single molecule or
new group of molecules might hold the possibility of
changing the world. That is the mission of the Holy Grail of
all searchers involved in the field of OSCs. The first
observation of photoconductivity in organic compound was
reported in 1906 by Pochettino [5]. Organic semi­
conductors are less expensive than inorganic semi­
conductors. During 1970 to 1980 decades many works have
been done in OSCs field, however very low efficiencies
were achieved because of low concentration and mobility of
free charge carriers.
Last ten years a new and strong interest has been devoted
to OSCs. A new interest is motivated by two recent
developments in the organic semi-conductor field. First the
quantum efficiency of the electron transfer from an excited
polymer to C60 is very high and fast [6], it is promising for
change carrier separation in PV cells and secondly the
development of efficient organic displays based on organic
light emitting devices (LED). Those displays are now
developed using low cost technology like OLED can be
tested for PV solar cells realization [7]. Plastic OSCs are
solid and consist either of two organic layers or a
homogeneous mixture of two organic materials. One of
them is organic dye or a semiconducting polymer - donates
the electrons and other component serves as the electron
acceptor. Generally, a fullerene is used for this. After the
charges have been separated, the holes are transported to the
anode and the electrons are transported to the cathode, to
supply a direct current for the load.
Few years ago, Shaheen and co-workers have reported
solar cells 2.5% efficiency [8]. Also, CUPe/C60 bi-Iayer cell,
with an excitation-blocking layer, yields 3.6% efficiency.
Recently more than 5% efficiency has been announced for
optimised structures in both devices. Single junction solar
cells made-up with materials such as PTB7/PC7IBM have
been reported with efficiencies as high as 9.2% [9]. Higher
OPV efficiencies can be achieved by fabricating Tandem
solar cells consist of multiple active layers with different
band gaps. This device, high energy photons are absorbed
by the first layer, which has the largest band gap, and lower
energy photons pass through to the second absorbing layer
for capture by a material for a lower band gap. The current
published and certified record for an OPV cell is held by
Mitsubishi Chemical at 10.7% for a tandem device 10], even
higher efficiencies 12% have been reported [11].
28
Recent notable development in OSCs is the beginning of
high-performance small molecule absorbers/ donors.
Conjugated polymers have controlled the field for the last
decade, but challenges associated with polymer synthesis
such as batch-to-batch variation in performance, have led to
a search for small molecules that can competitor polymers
in devices [12]. So many cases, small molecules are not
suitably soluble to be processed in solution, and vapour
deposition processes are naturally more expensive and
therefore less attractive. While vapour-deposited small
molecule OSCs have made substantial progress recently
[13], particular excitement has been generated by reports of
solution-possible small molecule OSCs [14].
A. Energy payback time
OSCs have an exceptional sustainability performance
compared to other PV technologies. An important life cycle
metric for evaluating the energy production technology is
the time required to produce the energy invested throughout
its life cycle. It is called the energy payback time (EPBT).
For a PV module, the EPBT is the time required for the PV
module to generate the equivalent amount of energy that
originally was used to manufacture the PV module [15]. In
the current scenario, OPV modules have an efficiency of 1%
and a lifetime of two years, for mid-term efficiency 10%
and life time 10 years while in the long term scenario, the
efficiency increases to 15% and the lifetime is as long as 20
years [16]. EPBT for silicon, CdTe, and OPV modules are
shown in Fig. 3.
Fig. 3 EPBT for silicon, CdTe, and OPV modules for current, mid­
term and long-term are shown [17]
B. Green house gas emissions
Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of a device life cycle
indicate its environmental impact on the global climate. In
the current scenario, the GHG emission factor of OPVs is
higher than those of silicon and CdTe PVs. The CO2
emission factors of all PV modules will decrease drastically
from the current scenario to the long-term future. In
particular, OPV emissions become the smallest in the long­
term future scenario Fig. 4. The significant decrease is
mainly due to the increase of conversion efficiency and
operating lifetime. The study does expose the significant
environmental benefits of OPV technologies in the long­
term future.
 Proceedings of 2015 3rd International Conference on Advances in Electrical Engineering
17-19 December, 2015, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Fig.4. Carbon emissions for silicon, CdTe, and OPV modules for
current and long-term are shown [17].
C. Power conversion Efficiency
The crucial obstacle to increase the efficiency of OSCs
is the range of spectral absorption of light. The power
conversion efficiency (PCE) has exceeds 9% for single­
junction PSCs [18-21] and 11% for tandem-junction cells
[22]. However, to promote the OSCs in the practical
applications, to enhancements in the efficiency are urgently
required for single-junction OSCs. For high-performance
single-junction OSCs, the film thickness of the photoactive
layers is around 100-200 nm to minimize the charge
recombination loss for charge extraction due to the low
carrier mobility. The overall light absorption of PSCs in
such a thickness scale is inevitably limited between 60%
and 80%. To avoid this problem, the optical light has
capture solar radiation more effectively into an ultrathin
photoactive layer with efficient charge extraction and thus
to improve the light-harvesting efficiency. The deterministic
aperiodic nanostructures (DANs) have suggested a route to
controlling the light harvesting in organic optoelectronics
with the uncomplicated fabrication procedures. The single­
junction PSCs were constructed with a configuration of
ITO/ZnO/PTB7-Th: PC71 BMiMoOxlAI with and without
the incorporation of DANs.
J h = h - JD,
p P.-H. Wang, Y.-H. Liu, K.-T. Wong, J. Wen, D. J. Miller and S. B.
Where h and JD are the current densities under
illumination and in dark, and
Veff= Vo - V
Where V is the applied voltage and V 0 is the
compensation voltage at which Jph =O.
The Jph increases linearly with the voltage at a low
value of Veff«O.1 V).
And tends to saturate at a sufficiently high value of Veff
(>1 V).
The higher Jph usually means a higher charge extraction
efficiency, which leads a relative higher fill factor (FF). In
this case, the superior Jph - Veff, characteristics from the
patterned PSC clearly identify the higher charge extraction
property in the patterned PSCs due to the optimized contact
between the ZnO film and the photoactive layer. In
summary, high-performance single-junction PSCs with
efficiency over 10% have been demonstrated by
29
implementing the DAN patterning for broadband self­
enhanced light absorption with optimum charge extraction
[23]. We expect this result will promote the development of
high-efficiency PSCs with new device structures.
IV. CO NCLUSIO NS
With current achievements, OSCs are placed a nice
applications that because of their advantages. The
efficiencies and lifetimes continue to improve a new
opportunities will emerge. In the relatively near future,
OSCs will achieve a strong role in third-world, off-grid
uses. In the long term, climate change and other factors
demand TWs of energy be supplied by the sun, and the
future of OSCs will have unique advantages for very large­
scale power generation because of their scalability as well as
their remarkably low cost, low energy payback time and
carbon emissions, making them a most important competitor
in the world energy marketplace.
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