Optical Modeling of Hybrid Polymer Solar Cells Using a Transmission-Line Model and Comparison With Experimental Results

Organic photovoltaic (OPV) cells provide an efficient alternative solution compared to traditional PV devices. Their conversion efficiency is directly dependent to the light intensity in the photoactive layer. The present work proposes a fast, accurate, and easy-to-implement transmission-line model, which evaluates the light intensity in any layer inside a multilayer OPV cell. In particular, a plane optical wave impinging normally on a planar multilayer OPV configuration is considered and next the optical field distribution is determined. Numerical results and optimization guidelines for a hybrid PV configuration are presented and discussed.