Ultrafast electron and hole transfer in bulk heterojunctions of low-bandgap polymers

In modern bulk heterojunction (BHJ) organic solar cells, blends of low-bandgap polymer and [70]PCBM acceptor are used in the active layer. In this combination, the polymer absorbs photons from the red and near-IR parts of the solar spectrum, while the blue and near-UV photons are harvested by [70]PCBM. As a result, both electron transfer from polymer to [70]PCBM and hole transfer from [70]PCBM to polymer are of utmost importance in free charge generation and have to be optimized simultaneously. Here we study electron and hole transfer processes in BHJ blends of two low-bandgap polymers, BTT-DPP and PCPDTBT, by ultrafast photoinduced spectroscopy (PIA). By tracking the PIA dynamics, we observed substantially different charge separation pathways in BHJs of the two polymers with [70]PCBM. From the photoinduced anisotropy dynamics, we demonstrated that in the PCPDTBT:[70]PCBM system both electron and hole transfer processes are highly efficient, while in the BTTBPP:[ 70]PCBM electron transfer is blocked due to the unfortunate energy level alignment leaving hole transfer the only pathway to free charge generation. Calculations at the density functional theory level are used to gain more insight into our findings. The presented results highlight the importance of the energy level alignment on the charge separation process.