Locally Broken Crystal Symmetry Facilitates Singlet Exciton Fission

Photovoltaic yield is normally limited to at most two charge carriers per photon. In solid pentacene this limit may be potentially bypassed owing to singlet exciton fission into a pair of triplets. The process occurs via a superexchange mechanism mediated by charge-transfer (CT) configurations and is sensitive to their energies. As demonstrated recently, these strongly depend on the local environment of the two molecules on which the charges reside. Using a multiscale model, here we show that in the crystal bulk approximate local symmetry affects CT state energetics in a way unfavorable for fission, so that at the places where this symmetry is broken the fission probability is enhanced by up to an order of magnitude. These fission-favorable locations entail the vicinity of vacancies, specific impurities, and interfaces, such as crystallite boundaries. Hence, photovoltaic yield might be substantially increased by using nanoscopically disordered pentacene rather than highly ordered specimens.