Organic photovoltaic cells based on unconventional electron donor fullerene and electron acceptor copper hexadecafluorophthalocyanine

We demonstrate organic discrete heterojunction photovoltaic cells based on fullerene (C(60)) and copper hexadecafluorophthalocyanine (F(16)CuPc), in which the C(60) and F(16)CuPc act as the electron donor and the electron acceptor, respectively. The C(60)/F(16)CuPc cells fabricated with conventional and inverted architectures both exhibit comparable power conversion efficiencies. Furthermore, we show that the photocurrent in both cells is generated by a conventional exciton dissociation mechanism rather than the exciton recombination mechanism recently proposed for a similar C(60)/F(16)ZnPc system [Song et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc. 132, 4554 (2010)]. These results demonstrate that new unconventional material systems are a potential way to fabricate organic photovoltaic cells with inverted as well as conventional architectures. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3671181]