title: On the short circuit resilience of organic solar cells: prediction and validation.
abstract: The operational characteristics of organic solar cells manufactured with large area processing methods suffers from the occurrence of short-circuits due to defects in the photoactive thin film stack. In this work we study the effect of a shunt resistance on an organic solar cell and demonstrate that device performance is not affected negatively as long as the shunt resistance is higher than approximately 1000 Ohm. By studying charge transport across
  PSS-lithium fluoride/aluminum (LiF/Al) shunting junctions we show that this prerequisite is already met by applying a sufficiently thick (>1.5 nm) LiF layer. We demonstrate that this remarkable shunt-resilience stems from the formation of a significant charge transport barrier at the
  PSS-LiF/Al interface. We validate our predictions by fabricating devices with deliberately severed photoactive layers and find an excellent agreement between the calculated and experimental current-voltage characteristics.
authors.affiliation: Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials, University of Groningen, Nijenborgh 4, 9747 AG, Groningen, The Netherlands. a.j.oostra@rug.nl.
authors.forename: A Jolt
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Oostra
authors.forename: Edsger C P
authors.initials: EC
authors.lastname: Smits
authors.forename: Dago M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: de Leeuw
authors.forename: Paul W M
authors.initials: PW
authors.lastname: Blom
authors.forename: Jasper J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Michels