Bipolar polaron pair recombination in polymer/fullerene solar cells

Abstract

We present a study of the rate-limiting spin-dependent charge-transfer processes in different polymer/fullerene bulk-heterojunction solar cells at 10K. Observing central spin-locking signals in pulsed electrically detected magnetic resonance and an inversion of Rabi oscillations in multifrequency electron-double-resonance spectroscopy, we find that the spin response of both spin-coated and printed P3HT/PCBM and spin-coated PCDTBT/PCBM solar cells at low temperatures is governed by bipolar polaron pair recombination and quantitatively determine the polaron-polaron coupling strength with double electron-electron resonance experiments. Furthermore spin Hahn echo decay and inversion recovery measurements are performed to measure spin coherence and recombination times of the polaron pairs, respectively.