Miscibility‐Controlled Phase Separation in Double‐Cable Conjugated Polymers for Single‐Component Organic Solar Cells with Efficiencies over 8 %

Jiang, Xudong; Yang, Junfeng; Karuthedath, Safakath; Li, Junyu; Lai, Wenbin; Li, Cheng; Xiao, Chengyi; Ye, Long; Ma, Zaifei; Tang, Zheng; Laquai, Frédéric; Li, Weiwei

doi:10.1002/ange.202009272

Cited by 18 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 78 publications

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“…Several electron-donor-type units such as poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT), diketopyrrolopyrrole (DPP), and 5,7-bis(2-ethylhexyl)benzo[1,2-c:4,5-c0]dithiophene-4,8-dione (BDD), as well as benzodithiophene (BDT), can be coupled with crystalline electron acceptors like perylene bisimide (PBI) and naphthalene diimides (NDI), which resulted recently into efficiencies of up to 8.4% for SCOSCs based on the polymeric materials with the side-chain approach. [24][25][26] Most works about SCOSCs focused on the synthesis of new materials and the adjustment of nanophase morphology. Various strategies are based on adding halogen atoms onto the polymer backbone, changing the length of the alkyl linker between electron donors and acceptors, or using different posttreatment processes to tune the packing order.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unraveling the Charge‐Carrier Dynamics from the Femtosecond to the Microsecond Time Scale in Double‐Cable Polymer‐Based Single‐Component Organic Solar Cells

Wang

Lüer

et al. 2021

Advanced Energy Materials

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color management, and easy manufacturing on a large scale-all being hallmarks of promising low environmental-impact photovoltaic technologies. [1,2] A record efficiency of around 19% has been recently achieved for bulk-heterojunction (BHJ) OSCs based on a nonfullerene electron acceptor. [3] Processing kinetically mixed electron donor (D) and acceptor (A) into thin-film BHJ composites typically results in nonequilibrium microstructures, which are generally thermodynamically unstable. As a consequence, unfavorable microstructure phase separation and/or diffusion of donor/acceptor components may evolve upon external stress such as temperature or illumination, resulting in microstructurerelated performance losses. [4][5][6][7][8][9] As an alternative, organic photovoltaic (OPV) materials based on covalently linked electron donors and acceptors have been developed for almost two decades, but only recently made a major step toward more competitive performance. Nevertheless, the basic processes in single-component organic solar cells (SCOSCs), like efficient light absorption, exciton dissociation, and charge transport, directly mimic those in conventionally blended BHJ composites. [10] Single-component organic solar cells (SCOSCs) have witnessed great improvement during the last few years with the champion efficiency jumping from the previous 2-3% to currently 6-11% for the representative material classes. However, the photophysics in many of these materials has not been sufficiently investigated, lacking essential information regarding charge-carrier dynamics as a function of microstructure, which is highly demanded for a better understanding and potential guidance for further improvements. In this work, for the first time, the charge-carrier dynamics of a representative doublecable polymer, which achieves efficiencies of over 6% as an active layer in SCOSCs, is investigated across seven orders of magnitude in time scale, from fs-ps charge generation to ns-µs charge recombination processes. Specific emphasis is placed on understanding the impact of thermal post-treatment on the charge dissociation and recombination dynamics. Annealing the photoactive layer at 230 °C results in the highest photovoltaic performance because of efficient charge generation in parallel to suppressed recombination. This work intends to present a complete picture of the charge-carrier dynamics in SCOSCs using the representative double-cable polymer PBDBPBICl.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unraveling the Charge‐Carrier Dynamics from the Femtosecond to the Microsecond Time Scale in Double‐Cable Polymer‐Based Single‐Component Organic Solar Cells

Wang

Lüer

et al. 2021

Advanced Energy Materials

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“…45,[52][53][54][55][56] Recently reported SCOSCs with a record efficiency of 8.4% belong to the category of double-cable polymers. 57 The adjustment of nanophase separation and adequate ambipolar transport channels is difficult for double-cable polymers, since both, the polymer backbone as well as the acceptor side chain, possess strong crystallinity and aggregation tendency. Therefore, the length of linker between the donor and the acceptor is key to control the interaction between these two parts.…”

Section: Category Of Scoscsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…87 Li's group recently reported a series of highly efficient double-cable polymers with efficiencies higher than 6%. 39,57,88 Employing BDBT as donor units and PBI as acceptor units, Li et al explored a double-cable polymer P17a and used thermal annealing at different temperatures to tune the crystallinity. 39 As shown in Figure 7, P17a exhibited a significantly enhanced crystalline structure when increasing the annealing temperature.…”

Section: Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Most recently, Li et al reported SCOSCs with a record efficiency of 8.40 % from P18 with BDBT as the backbone donor and naphthalene diimides (NDIs) as side chain acceptors. 57 Two polymers P18a and P18b with extra chlorine (Cl) atoms located at different positions on the conjugated backbones were obtained. When Cl atoms were positioned at the main chains (P18b), the polymer formed a more twisted backbone, enabling better miscibility with the NDI side units.…”

Section: Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Single-Component Organic Solar Cells with Competitive Performance

Brabec

2021

Organic Materials

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Organic semiconductors with chemically linked donor and acceptor units can realize charge carrier generation, dissociation and transport within one molecular architecture. These covalently bonded chemical structures enable single-component organic solar cells (SCOSCs) most recently to start showing specific advantages over binary or multi-component bulk heterojunction concepts due to simplified device fabrication and a dramatically improved microstructure stability. The organic semiconductors used in SCOSCs can be divided into polymeric materials, that is, double-cable polymers, di-block copolymers as well as donor–acceptor small molecules. The nature of donor and acceptor segments, the length and flexibility of the connecting linker and the resultant nanophase separation morphology are the levers which allow optimizing the photovoltaic performance of SCOSCs. While remaining at 1–2% for over a decade, efficiencies of SCOSCs have recently witnessed significant improvement to over 6% for several materials systems and to a record efficiency of 8.4%. In this mini-review, we summarize the recent progress in developing SCOSCs towards high efficiency and stability, and analyze the potential directions for pushing SCOSCs to the next efficiency milestone.

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“…Single-component (SC) OSCs, being a separate field of organic photovoltaics, have attracted much attention due to a simple device structure and the lack of time-dependent active layer phase segregation [46][47][48]. SC OSCs are showing rapid advances and the most efficient devices based on so-called "double-cable" polymers are now approaching over 8% PCE [49]. In fact, the "double-cable" polymers or similar small molecule dyads consist of donor and acceptor units linked to each other through an aliphatic spacer within one molecule.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Branched Electron-Donor Core Effect in D-π-A Star-Shaped Small Molecules on Their Properties and Performance in Single-Component and Bulk-Heterojunction Organic Solar Cells †

et al. 2021

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Star-shaped donor-acceptor molecules are full of promise for organic photovoltaics and electronics. However, the effect of the branching core on physicochemical properties, charge transport and photovoltaic performance of such donor-acceptor materials in single-component (SC) and bulk heterojunction (BHJ) organic solar cells has not been thoroughly addressed. This work shows the comprehensive investigation of six star-shaped donor-acceptor molecules with terminal hexyldicyanovinyl blocks linked through 2,2′-bithiophene π-conjugated bridge to different electron-donating cores such as the pristine and fused triphenylamine, tris(2-methoxyphenyl)amine, carbazole- and benzotriindole-based units. Variation of the branching core strongly impacts on such important properties as the solubility, highest occupied molecular orbital energy, optical absorption, phase behavior, molecular packing and also on the charge-carrier mobility. The performance of SC or BHJ organic solar cells are comprehensively studied and compared. The results obtained provide insight on how to predict and fine-tune photovoltaic performance as well as properties of donor-acceptor star-shaped molecules for organic solar cells.

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Miscibility‐Controlled Phase Separation in Double‐Cable Conjugated Polymers for Single‐Component Organic Solar Cells with Efficiencies over 8 %

Cited by 18 publications

References 78 publications

Unraveling the Charge‐Carrier Dynamics from the Femtosecond to the Microsecond Time Scale in Double‐Cable Polymer‐Based Single‐Component Organic Solar Cells

Unraveling the Charge‐Carrier Dynamics from the Femtosecond to the Microsecond Time Scale in Double‐Cable Polymer‐Based Single‐Component Organic Solar Cells

Single-Component Organic Solar Cells with Competitive Performance

Branched Electron-Donor Core Effect in D-π-A Star-Shaped Small Molecules on Their Properties and Performance in Single-Component and Bulk-Heterojunction Organic Solar Cells †

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