Predicting solar cell performance from terahertz and microwave spectroscopy

Mobilities and lifetimes of photogenerated charge carriers are core properties of photovoltaic materials and can both be characterized by contactless terahertz or microwave measurements. Here, the expertise from fifteen laboratories is combined to quantitatively model the current-voltage characteristics of a solar cell from such measurements. To this end, the impact of measurement conditions, alternate interpretations, and experimental inter-laboratory variations are discussed using a (Cs,FA,MA)Pb(I,Br)3 halide perovskite thin-film as a case study. At 1 sun equivalent excitation, neither transport nor recombination is significantly affected by exciton formation or trapping. Terahertz, microwave, and photoluminescence transients for the neat material yield consistent effective lifetimes implying a resistance-free JV-curve with a potential power conversion efficiency of 24.6 %. For grainsizes above ≈20 nm, intra-grain charge transport is characterized by terahertz sum mobilities of ≈32 cm2 V−1 s−1. Drift-diffusion simulations indicate that these intra-grain mobilities can slightly reduce the fill factor of perovskite solar cells to 0.82, in accordance with the best-realized devices in the literature. Beyond perovskites, this work can guide a highly predictive characterization of any emerging semiconductor for photovoltaic or photoelectrochemical energy conversion. A best practice for the interpretation of terahertz and microwave measurements on photovoltaic materials is presented

Structural Heterogeneity in the Localized Excited States of Poly(3-hexylthiophene)

Transient hole-burning and resonantly enhanced Raman spectroscopies are used to probe heterogeneities among localized singlet excitons of poly­(3-hexylthiophene) in solution. Transient hole-burning spectroscopy facilitated by population dumping through wavelength-selective stimulated emission exposes inhomogeneous broadening of the exciton absorption band in the near-infrared, as reflected by correlations between stimulated emission and excited-state absorption transition energies. Dump-induced spectral diffusion of the exciton absorption band reflects structural fluctuations in the locally excited polymer. This diffusion is observed to occur slightly faster or slower than the nonequilibrium relaxation that follows direct excitation of the polymer (8–9 ps), with the time scale for diffusion varying with subpopulation: dumping across small vs large band gaps results in diffusion over 5 vs 35 ps, respectively. Furthermore, incomplete spectral relaxation of transient holes reflects that subsets of locally excited structural motifs prepared through photoexcitation cannot interchange through structural fluctuations that occur over the singlet-exciton lifetime. Raman spectra of the CC/C–C stretching region collected in resonance at energies across the exciton absorption band exhibit frequency and intensity trends (Raman “dispersion”) ascribed to variation in the local effective conjugation length. Together, results explicitly reveal heterogeneities among excitonic states associated with variations and fluctuations in local conformational order

Photoinduced Electron Transfer within Supramolecular Donor–Acceptor Peptide Nanostructures under Aqueous Conditions

We report the synthesis, self-assembly, and electron transfer capabilities of peptide-based electron donor–acceptor molecules and supramolecular nanostructures. These modified peptides contain π-conjugated oligothiophene electron donor cores that are peripherally substituted with naphthalene diimide electron acceptors installed via imidation of site-specific lysine residues. These molecules self-assemble into one-dimensional nanostructures in aqueous media, as shown through steady-state absorption, photoluminescence, and circular dichroism spectra, as well as transmission electron microscopy. Excitation of the oligothiophene donor moieties results in electron transfer to the acceptor units, ultimately creating polar, charge-separated states that persist for over a nanosecond as observed with transient absorption spectroscopy. This study demonstrates how transient electric fields can be engineered into aqueous nanomaterials of biomedical relevance through external, temporally controlled photonic inputs