Hot-carriers in organic photovoltaics

Photogenerated charge carriers in organic photovoltaics (OPVs) suffer relaxation and recombination losses. However, extracting these carriers at higher energy (‘Hot-carriers’) has been found to be effective to overcome such loss pathways and improve efficiency of OPVs. Excess energy and long delocalization length promotes hot-carrier escape from Coulombic attraction and dissociation into free charges. Here, I have reviewed the ways to generate hot-carriers and their extraction in organic backbones. In-depth understanding of their energetics and dynamics will help designing hot-carrier photovoltaics.