Structural order in organic solar cells is paramount: it reduces energetic disorder, boosts charge and exciton mobilities, and assists exciton splitting. Owing to spatial localization of electronic states, microscopic descriptions of photovoltaic processes tend to overlook the influence of structural features at the mesoscale. Long-range electrostatic interactions nevertheless probe this ordering, making local properties depend on the mesoscopic order. Using a technique developed to address spatially aperiodic excitations in thin films and in bulk, we show how inclusion of mesoscale order resolves the controversy between experimental and theoretical results for the energy-level profile and alignment in a variety of photovoltaic systems, with direct experimental validation. Optimal use of long-range ordering also rationalizes the acceptor-donor-acceptor paradigm for molecular design of donor dyes. We predict open-circuit voltages of planar heterojunction solar cells in excellent agreement with experimental data, based only on crystal structures and interfacial orientation.

The novel methyl-substituted dicyanovinyl-capped quinquethiophenes 1-3 led to highly efficient organic solar cells with power conversion efficiencies of 4.8-6.9%. X-ray analysis of single crystals and evaporated neat and blend films gave insights into the packing and morphological behavior of the novel compounds that rationalized their improved photovoltaic performance.

X-ray investigations on single crystals of a series of terminally dicyanovinyl-substituted quaterthiophenes and co-evaporated blend layers with C(60) give insight into molecular packing behavior and morphology, which are crucial parameters in the field of organic electronics. Structural characteristics on various levels and length scales are correlated with the photovoltaic performance of bulk heterojunction small-molecule organic solar cells.

By performing microscopic charge transport simulations for a set of crystalline dicyanovinyl-substituted oligothiophenes, we find that the internal acceptor-donor-acceptor molecular architecture combined with thermal fluctuations of dihedral angles results in large variations of local electric fields, substantial energetic disorder, and pronounced Poole-Frenkel behavior, which is unexpected for crystalline compounds. We show that the presence of static molecular dipoles causes large energetic disorder, which is mostly reduced not by compensation of dipole moments in a unit cell but by molecular polarizabilities. In addition, the presence of a well-defined π-stacking direction with strong electronic couplings and short intermolecular distances turns out to be disadvantageous for efficient charge transport since it inhibits other transport directions and is prone to charge trapping.

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