Current characterization methods of the so-called Bulk Heterojunction (BHJ), which is the main material of Organic Photovoltaic (OPV) solar cells, are limited to the analysis of global fabrication parameters. This reduces the efficiency of the BHJ design process, since it misses critical information about the local performance bottlenecks in the morphology of the material. In this paper, we propose a novel framework that fills this gap through visual characterization and exploration of local structure-performance correlations. We also propose a formula that correlates the structural features with the performance bottlenecks. Since research into BHJ materials is highly multidisciplinary, our framework enables a visual feedback strategy that allows scientists to build intuition about the best choices of fabrication parameters. We evaluate the usefulness of our proposed system by obtaining new BHJ characterizations. Furthermore, we show that our approach could substantially reduce the turnaround time.This is the pre-peer reviewed version of the following article: Aboulhassan, Amal, Daniel Baum, Olga Wodo, Baskar Ganapathysubramanian, Aram Amassian, and Markus Hadwiger. "A novel framework for visual detection and exploration of performance bottlenecks in organic photovoltaic solar cell materials." In Computer Graphics Forum, vol. 34, no. 3, pp. 401-410. 2015, which has been published in final form at DOI: 10.1111/cgf.12652. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.</p
