Fine-Tuned Photoactive and Interconnection Layers for Achieving over 13% Efficiency in a Fullerene-Free Tandem Organic Solar Cell

Yong Cui; Huifeng Yao; Bowei Gao; Yunpeng Qin; Shaoqing Zhang; Bei Yang; Chang He; Bowei Xu; Jianhui Hou

doi:10.1021/jacs.7b01493

Fine-Tuned Photoactive and Interconnection Layers for Achieving over 13% Efficiency in a Fullerene-Free Tandem Organic Solar Cell

J Am Chem Soc. 2017 May 31;139(21):7302-7309. doi: 10.1021/jacs.7b01493. Epub 2017 May 22.

Authors

Yong Cui^{1

2}, Huifeng Yao^{1

2}, Bowei Gao^{1

2}, Yunpeng Qin³, Shaoqing Zhang³, Bei Yang^{1

2}, Chang He^{1

2}, Bowei Xu^{1

2}, Jianhui Hou^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry, Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing 100190, China.
² University of Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing 100049, China.
³ School of Chemistry and Biology Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing , Beijing 100083, China.

PMID: 28497691
DOI: 10.1021/jacs.7b01493

Abstract

Fabricating organic solar cells (OSCs) with a tandem structure has been considered an effective method to overcome the limited light absorption spectra of organic photovoltaic materials. Currently, the most efficient tandem OSCs are fabricated by adopting fullerene derivatives as acceptors. In this work, we designed a new non-fullerene acceptor with an optical band gap (E_g^opt) of 1.68 eV for the front subcells and optimized the phase-separation morphology of a fullerene-free active layer with an E_g^opt of 1.36 eV to fabricate the rear subcell. The two subcells show a low energy loss and high external quantum efficiency, and their photoresponse spectra are complementary. In addition, an interconnection layer (ICL) composed of ZnO and a pH-neutral self-doped conductive polymer, PCP-Na, with high light transmittance in the near-IR range was developed. From the highly optimized subcells and ICL, solution-processed fullerene-free tandem OSCs with an average power conversion efficiency (PCE) greater than 13% were obtained.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't