Recent Development on Narrow Bandgap Conjugated Polymers for Polymer Solar Cells

Yueyue Gao; Ming Liu; Yong Zhang; Zhitian Liu; Yulin Yang; Liancheng Zhao

doi:10.3390/polym9020039

Recent Development on Narrow Bandgap Conjugated Polymers for Polymer Solar Cells

Polymers (Basel). 2017 Jan 28;9(2):39. doi: 10.3390/polym9020039.

Authors

Yueyue Gao^{1

2}, Ming Liu^{3

4}, Yong Zhang⁵, Zhitian Liu⁶, Yulin Yang⁷, Liancheng Zhao⁸

Affiliations

¹ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China. gaoyueyuewang@126.com.
² MIIT Key Laboratory of Critical Materials Technology for New Energy Conversion and Storage, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China. gaoyueyuewang@126.com.
³ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China. mingliu016@163.com.
⁴ College of Materials Science and Engineering, Wuhan Institute of Technology, Wuhan 430205, China. mingliu016@163.com.
⁵ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China. yongzhang@hit.edu.cn.
⁶ College of Materials Science and Engineering, Wuhan Institute of Technology, Wuhan 430205, China. able.ztliu@gmail.com.
⁷ MIIT Key Laboratory of Critical Materials Technology for New Energy Conversion and Storage, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China. ylyang@hit.edu.cn.
⁸ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China. lczhao@hit.edu.cn.

Abstract

There have been exciting developments in the field of polymer solar cells (PSCs) as the potential competitor to the traditional silicon-based solar cells in the past decades. The most successful PSCs are based on the bulk hetero-junction (BHJ) structure, which contains a bicontinuous nanoscale interpenetrating network of a conjugated polymer and a fullerene blend. The power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) of BHJ PSCs have now exceeded 11%. In this review, we present an overview of recent emerging developments of narrow bandgap conjugated polymers for PSCs. We focus on a few important acceptors used in the donor-acceptor type conjugated polymers for highly efficient PSCs. We also reviewed the emerged donor-π-acceptor (D-π-A) side chains polymers. The band-gaps and energy levels as well as the photovoltaic performances of conjugated polymers are discussed.

Keywords: conjugated polymers; narrow bandgap; photovoltaic cells; polymer solar cells.

Publication types

Review