Organic semiconductors have emerged as a distinct class of functional materials with rapidly expanding impact across modern electronics, photonics and energy technologies. Unlike crystalline inorganic semiconductors, they offer molecular tunability, mechanical flexibility, low-temperature processability, strong light–matter interaction, coupled electronic–ionic dynamics and possibility of continuous property tuning. Against this background, organic semiconductors naturally align with the More-than-Moore philosophy, emerging photonic, neuromorphic, and hybrid quantum architectures extending silicon-based technologies toward adaptive, multifunctional, and non-classical information processing. Beyond information processing, the transition toward sustainable energy systems represents a major technological priority, with organic materials playing an increasingly important role. Organic solar cells (OSCs) combine solution-based and low-temperature fabrication with large-area and printable processing, lightweight and mechanically flexible architectures, and tunable optical absorption. These attributes enable application scenarios beyond conventional silicon photovoltaics, including semitransparent, conformable, and integrated photovoltaic architectures.
In this study the focus is on the OSC applications. Тhe main emphasis is on organic materials employed in photovoltaic devices, particularly on their intrinsic properties and specific characteristics that directly influence solar cell performance. From the perspective тhe P3HT:PCBM-based photovoltaic devices with varying active layer thicknesses under both photodetector (PD) and solar cell (SC) operating conditions are considered. A comprehensive drift–diffusion model is used to reproduce experimental photocurrent spectra in PD and current density-voltage characteristics in SC working regime. Obtained results reveal strong correlations between P3HT:PCBM film thickness and morphology. Non-monotonic variation of the optical and electrical material parameters with its thin film thickness are consequently established. Another important question addressed in this study is whether a bulk heterojunction material such as P3HT:PCBM can be treated as an effective single material, as is commonly assumed. The observation of comparable performance in bilayer and bulk heterojunction OSC devices based on P3HT:PCBM suggests that the orientation and spatial arrangement of donor–acceptor (D/A) domains within the bulk heterostructure significantly influence the efficiency of charge carrier photogeneration and recombination indicating that BHJ materials should be viewed as an ensembles of D/A interfaces.
Jovana Gojanović is an Associate Professor with the Department for Nanoelectronics and Photonics at the School of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade. She received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in optoelectronics and laser techniques from School of Electrical Engineering in Belgrade in 2003. and 2007. She got her PhD in 2012. from the same faculty. Her research interests focus on optoelectronic devices, their operating principles, underlying physical mechanisms, and modeling. She is particularly interested in organic semiconductors, especially conductive polymers and their applications in solar cells and photodetectors. Perovskite materials and the modeling of perovskite solar cells also represent important topics of her interest. Her particular specialization is the application of the drift–diffusion model and more recently the use of physics-informed neural networks in the modeling of optoelectronic devices. Dr. Gojanovic has published more than 35 papers in scientific journals and conference proceedings. She has served as a reviewer for several journals and conferences. She has also participated in five national research projects. Dr. Gojanović received honorable degree in the competition of young physicists called “First Step to Nobel Prize” in Krakow in 1995. She is a member of Serbian Physicists Society.