Organic photovoltaics without p-n junctions: Computational study of ferroelectric columnar molecular clusters

Abstract

Structural and electronic properties of ferroelectric columnar clusters constructed from benzene-1,3,5-tricarboxylic acid, (B3CA)n, were investigated at the Hartree-Fock level. It is shown that B3CA stacks form helix-shaped molecular tubes which are stabilized by intermolecular hydrogen bonds. It is furthermore shown that the strong electric field generated by the uniaxial alignment of the carboxyl groups can split an optically prepared exciton into an electron-hole pair and can drive the charge carriers to the opposite ends of the tube. Some consequences of the phenomenon for photovoltaic applications are discussed.

19 pages, 10 figures

References in corpus (1)

• Ferroelectric Materials for Solar Energy Conversion: Photoferroics Revisited

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Separate-path electron and hole transport across pi-stacked ferroelectrics for photovoltaic applications
• Cascade donor-acceptor organic ferroelectric layers, between graphene sheets, for solar cell applications
• Ferroelectric $\pi$-stacks of molecules with the energy gaps in the sunlight range