High-Performance Nonfullerene Polymer Solar Cells Based on a Wide-Bandgap Polymer without Extra Treatment

Abstract

Nonfullerene polymer solar cells (PSCs) are developed based on a fluorinated thienyl-based wide-bandgap (WBG) polymer PBBF as the electron donor and nonfullerene small molecule IDIC as the electron acceptor. PBBF exhibits a strong absorption in the range of 300-605 nm with a wide optical bandgap of 2.05 eV, which is complementary with that of IDIC. Meanwhile, it possesses a deeper highest occupied molecular orbital energy level of -5.52 eV and a higher hole mobility of 7.3 × 10^-4 cm² V^-1 s^-1 compared to the nonfluorinated polymer PBDTT. The PSCs based on PBBF:IDIC without extra treatment show a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 8.5% with a V _oc of 0.95 V, a J _sc of 15.3 mA cm^-2 , and an FF of 58.8%, which is much higher than that of the devices based on PBDTT:IDIC (a PCE of 5.3% with a V _oc of 0.88 V, a J _sc of 13.7 mA cm^-2 , and an FF of 43.9%). These results indicate that PBBF is a promising WBG polymer donor material for the photovoltaic applications in nonfullerene PSCs.

Keywords: fluorination; nonfullerene; polymer solar cells; wide-bandgap polymers.