An Electrode Design Rule for Organic Photovoltaics Elucidated Using a Low Surface Area Electrode

Abstract It is widely considered that charge carrier extraction in bulk‐heterojunction organic photovoltaics (BHJ OPVs) is most efficient when the area of contact between the semiconductor layers and the electrodes is maximized and the electrodes are electrically homogeneous. Herein, it is shown that ≈99% of the electrode surface can in fact be insulating without degrading the efficiency of charge carrier extraction, provided the spacing of the conducting areas is less than or equal to twice the optimal thickness of the BHJ layer. This striking result is demonstrated for BHJ OPVs with both conventional and inverted device architectures using two different types of BHJ OPVs, namely, PCDTBT:PC 70 BM and the ternary blend PBDB‐T:ITIC‐m:PC 70 BM. This finding opens the door to the use of a large pallet of materials for optical spacers and charge transport layers, based on a low density of conducting particles embedded in a wide bandgap insulating matrix.