Experimental determination of the rate law for charge carrier decay in a polythiophene: Fullerene solar cell

Abstract

We use transient photovoltage and differential charging experiments, complemented by transient absorption data, to determine charge carrier lifetimes and densities in a poly(3-hexylthiophene): methanofullerene solar cell at $V_{\mathrm{oc}}$ as a function of white light-bias intensity. For a typical device, the charge carrier decay dynamics are observed to exhibit an approximately third order dependence on charge density $(dn∕dt\propto n^3)$ .