Improved Charge Transport and Reduced Nonradiative Energy Loss Enable Over 16% Efficiency in Ternary Polymer Solar Cells

Runnan Yu; Huifeng Yao; Yong Cui; Ling Hong; Chang He; Jianhui Hou

doi:10.1002/adma.201902302

Improved Charge Transport and Reduced Nonradiative Energy Loss Enable Over 16% Efficiency in Ternary Polymer Solar Cells

Adv Mater. 2019 Sep;31(36):e1902302. doi: 10.1002/adma.201902302. Epub 2019 Jul 11.

Authors

Runnan Yu^{1

2}, Huifeng Yao¹, Yong Cui^{1

2}, Ling Hong^{1

2}, Chang He¹, Jianhui Hou^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, CAS Research/Education Center for Excellence in Molecular Sciences (BNLMS), Beijing, 100190, China.
² University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China.

PMID: 31294900
DOI: 10.1002/adma.201902302

Abstract

Recent advances in the material design and synthesis of nonfullerene acceptors (NFAs) have revealed a new landscape for polymer solar cells (PSCs) and have boosted the power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) to over 15%. Further improvements of the photovoltaic performance are a significant challenge in NFA-PSCs based on binary donor:acceptor blends. In this study, ternary PSCs are fabricated by incorporating a fullerene derivative, PC₆₁ BM, into a combination of a polymer donor (PBDB-TF) and a fused-ring NFA (Y6) and a very high PCE of 16.5% (certified as 16.2%) is recorded. Detailed studies suggest that the loading of PC₆₁ BM into the PBDB-TF:Y6 blend can not only enhance the electron mobility but also can increase the electroluminescence quantum efficiency, leading to balanced charge transport and reduced nonradiative energy losses simultaneously. This work suggests that utilizing the complementary advantages of fullerene and NFAs is a promising way to finely tune the detailed photovoltaic parameters and further improve the PCEs of PSCs.

Keywords: nonfullerene acceptor; nonradiative energy loss; polymer solar cells; power conversion efficiency; ternary.

Abstract

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