Quantifying the effect of energetic disorder on organic solar cell energy loss

Understanding the factors affecting energy loss in organic photovoltaics (OPVs) is imperative to achieve further improvements in their efficiency and to establish design rules for the development of new materials. Here, we provide direct experimental evidence supporting correlation between charge-transfer (CT) state static disorder and energy loss. Specifically, upon studying several planar and bulk heterojunction solar cells, we demonstrate that the non-radiative energy loss component quadratically increases with increasing Gaussian CT-state disorder. We also show that by defining the total energy loss in terms of the peak of the CT-state distribution, obtained from temperature-dependent external quantum efficiency measurements, the effect of disorder on OPV performance can be unambiguously identified, offering a universal metric for quantifying energy loss across various devices.