Influence of characteristic energy of the valence band tail on performance of P3HT: PCBM bulk-heterojunction solar cell: AMPS-1D simulation study

AMPS-1D was used to simulate the dark and light current density-voltage characteristics of P3HT:PCBM bulk-heterojunction solar cell. An effective medium model with exponential valence and conduction band tail states was used to study the influence of characteristic energy of the valence band tail (E_D) on the performance of the device. The simulation result shows that the open-circuit voltage depends linearly on the logarithm of the generation rate and the slope depends on the characteristic energy of the valence band tail. The simulation results shows that the photovoltaic properties of P3HT:PCBM bulk-heterojunction solar cells are limited by the carrier recombination at the band tail states.