Multifunctional all‐polymer photovoltaic blend with simultaneously improved efficiency (18.04%), stability and mechanical durability

Abstract

One of the most appealing material systems for solar energy conversion is all‐polymer blend. Presently, the three key merits (power conversion efficiency, operation stability and mechanical robustness) exhibited a trade‐off in a particular all‐polymer blend system, which greatly limit its commercial application. Diverting the classic ternary tactic of organic solar cells based on polymer, nonfullerene small molecule and fullerene, herein we demonstrate that the three merits of a benchmark all‐polymer blend PM6:PY‐IT can be simultaneously maximized via the introduction of a polymerized fullerene derivative PPCBMB. Importantly, the addition of the guest component promoted the power conversion efficiency of PM6:PY‐IT blend from 16.59% to 18.04%. Meanwhile, the device stability and film ductility are also improved due to the addition of this polymerized fullerene material. Morphology and device physics analyses reveal that optimal ternary system contains well‐maintained molecular packing and crystallinity, being beneficial to keeping favorable charge transport and the reduced domain size contributed to charge generation and ductility improvement. Furthermore, the ternary photovoltaic blend was successfully used as photocatalysts, and an excellent heavy metal removal from water was demonstrated. This study showcases the multi‐functions of all‐polymer blends via the use of polymerized fullerenes.

An Isomeric Solid Additive Enables High‐Efficiency Polymer Solar Cells Developed Using a Benzo‐Difuran‐Based Donor Polymer

“…The molecular packing and crystallinity tuning effect of isomeric additives were studied via grazing-incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering (GIWAXS) tests. [49][50][51] The 2D patterns, relative line-cuts, and calculated peak parameters along the IP and outof-plane (OOP) directions are displayed in Figure 4a,b and Tables S3 and S4 (Supporting Information). The lamellar chain packing diffraction was co-contributed by D18-Fu and L8-BO, whose peaks can be found at 0.31 and 0.44 Å −1 , respectively.…”

Unveiling the Morphological and Physical Mechanism of Burn‐in Loss Alleviation by Ternary Matrix Toward Stable and Efficient All‐Polymer Solar Cells

“…Current research mainstream of all‐PSCs is to further promote the PCEs as high as those of small molecule‐composed counterparts, [ 17–21 ] and empirically the ternary blend strategy is one of the most commonly used methods to achieve this goal. [ 22–28 ] Notably, these works also prefer to claim enhanced device stability and sometimes better mechanical durability, but very few works provide an in‐depth understanding of such improvements. [ 29–31 ] Since the chemical nature of PSMAs now has altered from those traditional perylene diimides (PDI) and naphthalene diimide (NDI) based ones to small molecule‐based ones, the variation of device stability deserves more insightful investigation, instead of being an attached parameter reported along with PCE promoted by ternary matrix design.…”

“…[11][12][13][14][15][16] Current research mainstream of all-PSCs is to further promote the PCEs as high as those of small molecule-composed counterparts, [17][18][19][20][21] and empirically the ternary blend strategy is one of the most commonly used methods to achieve this goal. [22][23][24][25][26][27][28] Notably, these works also prefer to claim enhanced device stability and sometimes better mechanical durability, but very few works provide an in-depth understanding of such improvements. [29][30][31] Since the chemical nature of PSMAs now has altered from those traditional perylene diimides (PDI) and naphthalene diimide (NDI) based ones to small molecule-based ones, the variation of device All-polymer solar cells (All-PSCs) are considered the most promising candidate in achieving both efficient and stable organic photovoltaic devices, yet the field has rarely presented an in-depth understanding of corresponding device stability while efficiency is continuously boosted via the innovation of polymer acceptors.…”

High‐Efficiency Organic Solar Cells Enabled by Chalcogen Containing Branched Chain Engineering: Balancing Short‐Circuit Current and Open‐Circuit Voltage, Enhancing Fill Factor

“…[4] With the design of new conjugated polymer electron donors and nonfullerene electron acceptors (NFA) (e.g., PM6, [5] D18, [6] ITIC, [7] Y6 [8] ), morphology regulation, interface engineering, and device optimization, the power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) of single-junction binary OSCs have reached over 18%. [9][10][11][12][13][14][15] The PCEs of OSCs are proportional to three photovoltaic parameters of open-circuit voltage (V OC ), short-circuit current density (J SC ), and fill factor (FF) according to the equation of PCE = J SC × V OC × FF/P light . [16] It is well-established that the FF represents how "'difficult"' or how "'easy"' the photogenerated carriers can be extracted out of OSC devices, and it reflects the shape "squareness" of the current density-voltage (J-V) output curves.…”