Color-Temperature Dependence of Indoor Organic Photovoltaic Performance

Published

March 5, 2022

Author(s)

Boya Zhang, Justin Bonner, Lakshmi Murthy, Thien Nguyen, Fong-Yi Cao, Yen-Ju Cheng, Behrang Hamadani, Julia Hsu

Abstract

Organic materials are uniquely suited for indoor light energy harvesting because they absorb mostly in the visible spectrum and the absence of ultraviolet light minimizes their degradation. However, the performance of photovoltaic devices under indoor lighting depends on the correlated color temperatures (CCTs) of the light sources but has not been examined previously. Here we study organic photovoltaics with different combinations of donor and acceptor materials under white light-emitting diode (LED) illumination. The current density – voltage (J - V) measurements were performed under illuminance of 1000 lx at nominal LED CCTs of 3000 K, 4000 K, and 6000 K. Absorption spectra of neat and blended films and device external quantum efficiency were measured. Our results show that active layer absorption in the blue LED emission region determines the short-circuit current density (Jsc) increase from 3000 K to 6000 K CCT; the more the active layer absorbs at 450 nm, the larger the Jsc increase under higher CCTs. We find that the normalized fractional absorption of the active layer at 450 nm needs to be > 0.85 to eliminate a decrease in power conversion efficiency as the CCT is varied from 3000 K to 6000 K. This work highlights the unique tunability of organic absorbers that is difficult to achieve in inorganic materials and provides guidance on how to select organic absorbers for specific applications under different indoor illumination conditions.

Citation

Organic Electronics

Pub Type

Journals

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Citation

Zhang, B. , Bonner, J. , Murthy, L. , Nguyen, T. , Cao, F. , Cheng, Y. , Hamadani, B. and Hsu, J. (2022), Color-Temperature Dependence of Indoor Organic Photovoltaic Performance, Organic Electronics, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=934191 (Accessed April 19, 2024)