Organic Bulk-Heterojunction Solar Cells

Solar cells based on solution-processable organic semiconductors have shown a considerable performance increase in recent years, and a lot of progress has been made in the understanding of the elementary processes of photogeneration. This review will first give a brief overview of the historic development of plastic photovoltaics, and summarize the current state of knowledge concerning the different steps from light absorption to charge extraction. It becomes evident that recent developments and concepts for further improving the solar cell efficiencies show the potential of this technology for low-cost energy conversion.