International Conference on Computing, Communication and Automation (ICCCA2016) ISBN: 978-1-5090-1666-2/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE 1539 Recent Advancements and Overview of Organic Solar Cell Kamlesh Kukreti, Arun Pratap Singh Rathod and Brijesh Kumar Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, School of Engineering & Technology, Graphic Era University Dehradun-248002, India kamlesh.kukreti23@gmail.com, major.rathod@gmail.com, brijesh_kumar@ieee.org Abstract—This research paper is an attempt to present a concise depth insight of organic solar cells /organic photovoltaic cells (OPVs). Subsequently, this paper also discusses various recent advancements in organic solar cells in terms of material, structures and other performance influencing factors. Furthermore, depth analysis of organic solar cells is included in terms of current density (J SC ), fill factor (FF), short-circuit current (I SC ), open-circuit voltage (V OC ) and efficiency(η). This paper will be very much useful for the beginners of organic solar cells as emerging research area to convert their theoretical fundamental concept into device and circuit realization. This also discusses the small idea towards the different types of organic solar cells, Besides this, solar cell analysis is carried out using 2-D numerical device Atlas simulator, where impact of thickness variation of bulk heterojunction organic solar cells on performance parameter is performed. Index Terms—PEDOT: PSS (Polyethylene dioxythiophene Polystyrene sulphonicacid), PCBM ([6, 6]-phenyl-C61-buytric acid methylester), PV (photovoltaic), bulkhetero junction and bilayer. I. INTRODUCTION A need of an electrical energy is increasing worldwide very rapidly for the all kind of electronic applications. In fact, in the era of industrialization and globalization its demand has increased exponentially. Fossil fuels, which are the prime elements of electrical energy generation, are on the verge of being exhausted. Also, these fuels are the source of severe environmental pollution. Therefore, it is utmost necessary to harness energy from non-conventional sources or call them the clean energy resources. Recently, there have been great advancements in the organic semiconductor technology that includes organic solar cells /organic photovoltaic cells (OPVs) as an alternative to the conventional energy sources. Due to their low-cost fabrication, simple working principle, synthetic variability, and a capability to incorporate advanced materials, the OPVs have gained a huge attention of the researchers [1-10]. As OLEDs for display and street lighting applications had been commercialized, OPV devices have also improved from less than 1% efficiency to 10% efficiency to fulfill the requirements of the energy starved global market [3]. Moreover, the charge transport mechanism is simpler in organic materials as compared to inorganic materials. The charge mobility of organic materials is low due to the localization of the charged states, but their low-cost large-scale production may compensate it [5-21]. Organic solar cell technology, that permits the generation of electric energy from sunlight, is likely to play important role for solving the energy resources crisis around the world in an ecofriendly and sustainable way. The success of solar cells will depend on advancement in materials and designing of solar cell to increase the stability and the efficiency, at the same time to reduce operational, manufacturing and installation costs. At the present stage, the solar cell market depend largely on polycrystalline wafer based silicon gadgets and a variety of inorganic devices includes silicon, GaAs and CdTe thin film based solar cells [5-14]. Organic materials generally have exciton having 10nm of diffusion length and measures optical absorption of 100 nm [15-20]. The thickness of active layer ranges from 30 to 100 nm in response to efficiently collecting the photo generated carriers that is difficult to trap the sunlight [10-17]. Hence, there have been various changes in processing techniques and device architecture, at the same time various contributions to achieve high efficiency. This paper has been categorized into five sections, including the current introduction in Section I. Section II consists of historical background of OSC. After this, Section III explains the working principle of OPV. Section IV consists of classification of organic solar cell. Section V