A low cost and high performance polymer donor material for polymer solar cells

Sun, Chenkai; Pan, Fei; Bin, Haijun; Zhang, Jianqi; Xue, Ling-Wei; Qiu, Beibei; Wei, Zhixiang; Zhang, Zhiguo; Li, Yongfang

doi:10.1038/s41467-018-03207-x

Cited by 673 publications

(561 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…[51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61] We envisioned that the alloy strategy may provide a versatile avenue to accurately establish the relationship between the HOMO offset and the exciton dissociation process. By matching the ZITI-N and ZITI-S NFAs of different HOMOs, similar LUMO and molecular structure [62] with the poly[(thiophene)-alt-(6,7-difluoro-2-(2-hexyldecyloxy)quinoxaline)] (PTQ10) [63] (Figure 1a), PTQ10:ZITI-S, and PTQ10:ZITI-N blends show positive and negative HOMO off-sets, respectively, providing an ideal platform to study the relationships between the HOMO offset, efficiency for exciton dissociation, and final photovoltaic performance. Compared with PTQ10:ZITI-S (10.69%), the PTQ10:ZITI-N-based device shows a very low PCE of 7.06% and a J sc of 12.03 mA cm −2 , which is attributed to the negative ΔE HOMO .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accurate Determination of the Minimum HOMO Offset for Efficient Charge Generation using Organic Semiconducting Alloys

Zhang

Liu

Zhou

et al. 2019

Advanced Energy Materials

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reveal the bright future of this greenenergy technology. [1][2][3] Exciton dissociation into free charges is the most important optoelectronic process, which is driven by the energy-level difference between donor and acceptor materials. [4,5] For OSCs utilizing fullerene derivatives as electron acceptors, a lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) offset [ΔE LUMO = E LUMO(D) − E LUMO(A) ] of no less than 0.30 eV was generally proposed to guarantee efficient electron transfer. [6][7][8] However, this leads to large energy losses (>0.60 eV), as defined by E loss = E g opt − qV oc , (E g opt is the optical bandgap, V oc is the open-circuit voltage, and q is elementary charge), and limits the power conversion efficiency (PCE) to less than 12% [9][10][11][12][13][14] after decades of effort. Thus far, the development of donor (D)-acceptor (A)-type nonfullerene molecular acceptors (NFAs) with well-tunable electronic structures has opened up a great opportunity in this active topic because these NFAs have realized high PCEs over 15%. [15][16][17][18][19][20][21] To form a complementary absorption, current popular NFA OSCs are based on the combination of a widebandgap donor and a narrow-bandgap acceptor. [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33] For such a material combination, a large ΔE LUMO always exists, which reduces the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) offset [ΔE HOMO = E HOMO(D) − E HOMO(A) ] to minimize energy loss [34][35][36][37] while enhancing the light collection in near-infrared (NIR) Current research indicates that exciton dissociation into free charge carriers can be achieved in material combinations with the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) offset lowered to 0 eV in non-fullerene organic solar cells. However, the quantitative relationship between the HOMO offset and exciton dissociation has not been established because of the difficulty inachieving continuously tunable HOMO offsets. Here, the binary blends of PTQ10:ZITI-S and PTQ10:ZITI-N are combined to form the positive and negative HOMO offsets of 0.20 and −0.07 eV, respectively. While the PTQ10:ZITI-S binary blend delivers a decent power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 10.69% with a shortcircuit current (J sc ) of 16.94 mA cm −2 , the PTQ10:ZITI-N with the negative offset shows a much lower PCE of 7.06% mainly because of the low J sc of 12.03 mA cm −2 . Because the tunable HOMO levels can be realized in organic semiconducting alloys based on ZITI-N and ZITI-S acceptors, the transformation of the HOMO energy offset from negative to positive values is achieved in the PTQ10:ZITIN:ZITI-S ternary blends, delivering much-improved PCEs up to 13.26% with a significant, 74% enhancement of J sc to 20.93 mA cm −2 .With detailed investigations, the study reveals that the minimum HOMO offset of ≈40 meV is required to achieve the most-efficient exciton dissociation and photovoltaic performance.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accurate Determination of the Minimum HOMO Offset for Efficient Charge Generation using Organic Semiconducting Alloys

Zhang

Liu

Zhou

et al. 2019

Advanced Energy Materials

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“…[1][2][3][4][5] Combined developments in material and device engineering mainly contributed to such rapid advances. [1][2][3][4][5] Combined developments in material and device engineering mainly contributed to such rapid advances.…”

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confidence: 99%

Morphology Control Enables Efficient Ternary Organic Solar Cells

et al. 2018

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Ternary organic solar cells are promising alternatives to the binary counterpart due to their potential in achieving high performance. Although a growing number of ternary organic solar cells are recently reported, less effort is devoted to morphology control. Here, ternary organic solar cells are fabricated using a wide-bandgap polymer PBT1-C as the donor, a crystalline fused-ring electron acceptor ITIC-2Cl, and an amorphous fullerene derivative indene-C bisadduct (ICBA) as the acceptor. It is found that ICBA can disturb π-π interactions of the crystalline ITIC-2Cl molecules in ternary blends and then help to form more uniform morphology. As a result, incorporation of 20% ICBA in the PBT1-C:ITIC-2Cl blend enables efficient charge dissociation, negligible bimolecular recombination, and balanced charge carrier mobilities. An impressive power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 13.4%, with a high fill factor (FF) of 76.8%, is eventually achieved, which represents one of the highest PCEs reported so far for organic solar cells. The results manifest that the adoption of amorphous fullerene acceptor is an effective approach to optimizing the ternary blend morphology and thereby increases the solar cell performance.

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“…[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] Compared with traditional fullerene acceptors such as [6,6]-phenyl-C61/C71-butyric acid methyl ester (PC 61 BM/PC 71 BM), PSCs based on the n-OS acceptors have shown great potential in device performance and device stability. [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42] The rational design of the n-OS acceptors is typically based on molecular packing and orbital energetics strategies that are utilized to effectively alter the extension of π conjugation and frontier orbital energy levels. [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42] The rational design of the n-OS acceptors is typically based on molecular packing and orbital energetics strategies that are utilized to effectively alter the extension of π conjugation and frontier orbital energy levels.…”

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confidence: 99%

Side‐Chain Impact on Molecular Orientation of Organic Semiconductor Acceptors: High Performance Nonfullerene Polymer Solar Cells with Thick Active Layer over 400 nm

Luo

Sun

Chen

et al. 2018

Advanced Energy Materials

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In recent years, n-type organic semiconductor (n-OS) (or called as nonfullerene) acceptors have been gaining their popularity in low production cost, light weight, flexible and large-area applications in polymer solar cells (PSCs) due to their excellent optical absorption, tunable energy levels, facile synthesis, and good solution-processability. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] Compared with traditional fullerene acceptors such as [6,6]-phenyl-C61/C71-butyric acid methyl ester (PC 61 BM/PC 71 BM), PSCs based on the n-OS acceptors have shown great potential in device performance and device stability. [14,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29] And the n-OS acceptors-based devices have achieved power conversion efficiency (PCE) as high as over 12%. [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42] The rational design of the n-OS acceptors is typically based on molecular packing and orbital energetics strategies that are utilized to effectively alter the extension of π conjugation and frontier orbital energy levels. [43][44][45][46][47] Up to now, great efforts have been devoted to development of building blocks, terminal functional groups and side chains, which can effectively tune the band gap and energy levels of the n-OS acceptors. Among them, relatively little attention have been paid to the sidechain engineering of the n-OS acceptors. [5,[48][49][50][51] In comparison with backbone structure and terminal functional groups manipulation, "side-chain engineering" strategy can not only avoid the time-consuming end-capping deficient group and backbone synthesis, but also can improve the photovoltaic performance of PSCs. [33,49,[52][53][54] In addition, this strategy provides an intuitive approach to study the structure-property relationship for the acceptor with the small alterations of the side-chain structures. Structural modification in sidechains of the acceptor, such as changing in length, position, symmetry, and dimension, can remarkably affect molecular packing and intermolecular interaction. [5,[48][49][50][51] For example, the side-chain isomerization of ITIC (3,9-bis(2-methylene-(3-(1,1-dicyanomethylene)-indanone))-5,5,11,11-tetrakis(4hexylphenyl)-dithieno[2,3-d:2,3-d′]-s-indaceno[1,2-b:5,6-b′]dithiophene) with meta-alkyl-phenyl instead of para-alkyl-phenyl led to the acceptor m-ITIC with more evident crystallinity and higher electron mobility; [48] the replacement of the side chains of rigid indacenodithieno[3,2-b]-thiophene (IDTT) core from 4-hexylphenyl to 5-hexylthienyl downshifts the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) energy levels and improves the A new n-type organic semiconductor (n-OS) acceptor IDTPC with n-hexyl side chains is developed. Compared to side chains with 4-hexylphenyl counterparts (IDTCN), such a design endows the acceptor of IDTPC with higher electron mobility, more ordered face-on molecular packing, and lower band gap. Therefore, the IDTPC-based polymer solar cells (PSCs) with a newly developed wide bandgap polymer PTQ10 as donor exhi...

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A low cost and high performance polymer donor material for polymer solar cells

Cited by 673 publications

References 48 publications

Accurate Determination of the Minimum HOMO Offset for Efficient Charge Generation using Organic Semiconducting Alloys

Accurate Determination of the Minimum HOMO Offset for Efficient Charge Generation using Organic Semiconducting Alloys

Morphology Control Enables Efficient Ternary Organic Solar Cells

Side‐Chain Impact on Molecular Orientation of Organic Semiconductor Acceptors: High Performance Nonfullerene Polymer Solar Cells with Thick Active Layer over 400 nm

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