Alkylsilyl Fused Ring-Based Polymer Donor for Non-Fullerene Solar Cells with Record Open Circuit Voltage and Energy Loss

Bin Huang; Yujun Cheng; Hui Jin; Jiabin Liu; Xuexiang Huang; Yongjie Cui; Xunfan Liao; Changduk Yang; Zaifei Ma; Lie Chen

doi:10.1002/smll.202104451

Alkylsilyl Fused Ring-Based Polymer Donor for Non-Fullerene Solar Cells with Record Open Circuit Voltage and Energy Loss

Small. 2021 Nov;17(47):e2104451. doi: 10.1002/smll.202104451. Epub 2021 Oct 13.

Authors

Bin Huang^{1

2}, Yujun Cheng¹, Hui Jin³, Jiabin Liu¹, Xuexiang Huang¹, Yongjie Cui⁴, Xunfan Liao⁴, Changduk Yang⁵, Zaifei Ma³, Lie Chen¹

Affiliations

¹ College of Chemistry/Institute of Polymers and Energy Chemistry (IPEC), Nanchang University, Nanchang, 330031, P. R. China.
² Faculty of Materials Metallurgy and Chemistry, Jiangxi University of Science and Technology, 156 Ke Jia Avenue, Ganzhou, 341000, China.
³ Center for Advanced Low-dimension Materials, State Key Laboratory for Modification of Chemical Fibers and Polymer Materials, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Donghua University, Shanghai, 201620, China.
⁴ Institute of Advanced Scientific Research (iASR), Jiangxi Normal University, 99 Ziyang Avenue, Nanchang, 330022, China.
⁵ Department of Energy Engineering, School of Energy and Chemical Engineering, Perovtronics Research Center, Low Dimensional Carbon Materials Center, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), 50 UNIST-gil, Ulju-gun, Ulsan, 44919, South Korea.

PMID: 34643026
DOI: 10.1002/smll.202104451

Abstract

The energy loss (E_loss ), especially the nonradiative recombination loss and energetic disorder, needs to be minimized to improve the device performance with a small voltage (V_OC ) loss. Urbach energy (E_U ) of organic photovoltaic materials is related to energetic disorder, which can predict the E_loss of the corresponding device. Herein, a polymer donor (PBDS-TCl) with Si and Cl functional atoms for organic solar cells (OSCs) is synthesized. It can be found that the V_OC and E_loss can be well manipulated by regulation of the energy level of the polymer donor and E_U , which is dominated by the morphology. A low energetic disorder with an E_U of 23.7 meV, a low driving force of 0.08 eV, and a low E_loss of 0.41 eV are achieved for the PBDS-TCl:Y6-based OSCs. Consequently, an impressive open circuit voltage (V_OC ) of 0.92 V is obtained. To the best of knowledge, the V_OC value and E_loss are both the record values for the Y6-based device. These results demonstrate that fine-tuning the polymer donor by functional atom modification on the side chain is a promising way to reduce E_U and energy loss, as well as obtain small driving force and high V_OC for highly efficient OSCs.

Keywords: Urbach energy; energy loss; high open circuit voltage; organic solar cells; polymer donor.

Abstract

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