Highly Efficient and Photostable Ternary Organic Solar Cells Enabled by the Combination of Non-Fullerene and Fullerene Acceptors with Thienopyrrolodione-based Polymer Donors

Jong-Woon Ha; Chang Eun Song; Hee Su Kim; Du Hyeon Ryu; Won Suk Shin; Do-Hoon Hwang

doi:10.1021/acsami.0c14367

Highly Efficient and Photostable Ternary Organic Solar Cells Enabled by the Combination of Non-Fullerene and Fullerene Acceptors with Thienopyrrolodione-based Polymer Donors

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2020 Nov 18;12(46):51699-51708. doi: 10.1021/acsami.0c14367. Epub 2020 Nov 3.

Authors

Jong-Woon Ha¹, Chang Eun Song², Hee Su Kim¹, Du Hyeon Ryu², Won Suk Shin², Do-Hoon Hwang¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry and Chemistry Institute for Functional Materials, Pusan National University, Busan 46241, Republic of Korea.
² Energy Materials Research Center, Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT), Daejeon 34114, Republic of Korea.

PMID: 33140971
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.0c14367

Abstract

Two polymer donors, PFBDT-8ttTPD and PClBDT-8ttTPD, consisting of halogenated thiophene-substituted benzo[1,2-b:4,5-b']dithiophene and alkyl-substituted thieno[3,2-b]thiophene linked thieno[3,4-c]pyrrole-4,6(5H)-dione, were designed and synthesized for the evaluation of photovoltaic performances. The fabricated IT-4F-based organic solar cells (OSCs) exhibited maximum power conversion efficiency (PCE) values of 12.81 and 11.12% for PFBDT-8ttTPD and PClBDT-8ttTPD, respectively. Furthermore, PFBDT-8ttTPD:Y6 showed significantly improved PCE (15.05%) due to the extended light harvesting in the broad solar spectrum, whereas the PClBDT-8ttTPD:Y6 displayed relatively low PCE (10.02%). A ternary system incorporating PC₇₁BM as the third component into bulk-heterojuction composites (PFBDT-8ttPTD:non-fullerene) was investigated with the aim of utilizing the advantages of PC₇₁BM. As a result, PFBDT-8ttTPD:IT-4F:PC₇₁BM exhibited an improved PCE (13.67%) compared to that of the corresponding binary OSC. In particular, ternary OSC of PFBDT-8ttTPD:Y6:PC₇₁BM showed outstanding photovoltaic performance (PCE = 16.43%) as well as photostability, retaining approximately 80% of the initial PCE after 500 h under continuous illumination. The introduction of a small amount of PC₇₁BM resulted in favorable and dense molecular packing with improved crystallinity as well as enhanced charge carrier mobility for efficient OSC.

Keywords: fullerene; non-fullerene; organic solar cell; photostable; ternary solar cell; thienopyrroledione.