Efficient Ternary Organic Solar Cells with Suppressed Nonradiative Recombination and Fine-Tuned Morphology via IT-4F as Guest Acceptor

Abstract

The large open circuit voltage (V_OC) loss is currently one of the main obstacles to achieving efficient organic solar cells (OSCs). In this study, the ternary OSCs comprising PM6:BTP-eC9:IT-4F demonstrate a superior efficiency of 18.2 %. Notably, the utilization of the medium bandgap acceptor IT-4F as the third component results in an exceptionally low nonradiative recombination energy loss of 0.28 V. The desirable energy level cascade is formed among PM6, BTP-eC9, and IT-4F due to the low-lying HOMO and LUMO energy levels of IT-4F. More importantly, the V_OC of PM6:BTP-eC9:IT-4F OSCs can reach as high as 0.86 V, which is higher than both binary OSCs without sacrificing J_SC and FF. Besides, this strategy proved that IT-4F can not only broaden the absorption range but also work as a morphology modifier in PM6:BTP-eC9:IT-4F OSCs, and there also exists efficient energy transfer between BTP-eC9 and IT-4F. This result provides a promising way to suppress the nonradiative recombination energy loss and realize higher V_OC than the two binary OSCs in ternary OSCs to obtain high power conversion efficiencies.

Keywords: energy loss; medium bandgap acceptor; morphology modifier; nonradiative recombination; ternary organic solar cells.