Zwitter-Ionic Polymer Applied as Electron Transportation Layer for Improving the Performance of Polymer Solar Cells

Qiaoyun Chen; Zhendong Li; Bin Dong; Yi Zhou; Bo Song

doi:10.3390/polym9110566

Zwitter-Ionic Polymer Applied as Electron Transportation Layer for Improving the Performance of Polymer Solar Cells

Polymers (Basel). 2017 Nov 1;9(11):566. doi: 10.3390/polym9110566.

Authors

Qiaoyun Chen¹, Zhendong Li², Bin Dong³, Yi Zhou⁴, Bo Song⁵

Affiliations

¹ College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Soochow University, Suzhou 215123, China. chenqiaoyun1995@163.com.
² College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Soochow University, Suzhou 215123, China. lizhendong@zoho.com.
³ College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Soochow University, Suzhou 215123, China. bdong@suda.edu.cn.
⁴ College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Soochow University, Suzhou 215123, China. yizhou@suda.edu.cn.
⁵ College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Soochow University, Suzhou 215123, China. songbo@suda.edu.cn.

Abstract

A zwitter-ionic polymer poly (sulfobetaine methacrylate) (denoted by PSBMA) was employed as an electron transportation layer (ETL) in polymer solar cells (PSCs) based on poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT):[6,6]-phenyl-C₆₁-butyric acid methyl ester (PC₆₁BM). PSBMA is highly soluble in trifluoroethanol, showing an orthogonal solubility to the solvent of the active layer in the preparation of multilayered PSCs. Upon introduction of PSBMA, the short circuit current and as a consequence the power conversion efficiency of the corresponding PSCs are dramatically improved, which can be because of the relatively high polarity of PSBMA compared with the other ETLs. This study demonstrated that zwitter-ionic polymer should be a competitive potential candidate of ETLs in PSCs.

Keywords: ETL; PSBMA; betaine; zwitter-ionic polymer.