14.4% efficiency all-polymer solar cell with broad absorption and low energy loss enabled by a novel polymer acceptor

Jia, Tao; Zhang, Jiabin; Zhong, Wenkai; Liang, Yuanying; Zhang, Kai; Dong, Shengyi; Ying, Lei; Liu, Feng; Wang, Xiaohui; Huang, Fei; Cao, Yong

doi:10.1016/j.nanoen.2020.104718

Cited by 299 publications

(290 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…A possibly third class of acceptor materials-polymeric acceptors-are blooming at the technology horizon, but are not yet at the same level as FAs or NFAs. [21] The FAs era had identified two physical limitations which prevented organic solar cells from overcoming the 15% efficiency milestone. Primarily, the excitonic nature of organic semiconductors in combination with the formation of low energetic charge transfer states (CT) at the interface between the donor and acceptor were identified to limit the maximum achievable performance, both contributing about 300 mV in Voc losses.…”

Section: (3 Of 10)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Material Strategies to Accelerate OPV Technology Toward a GW Technology

Brabec

Distler

et al. 2020

Advanced Energy Materials

119

101

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the worldwide peak capacity of solar energy production has caught up with wind power, and is expected to be the first renewable energy to exceed the TWp limit in the next few years, probably already by 2023. [1] Solar Power Europe reports levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for photovoltaic power to range from 5 c (kWh) −1 in the North of Europe like in Helsinki and 3 c (kWh) −1 in the south of Europe, like in Malaga, which will further go down to 3 c (kWh) −1 respectively 1c (kWh) −1. [2] Fraunhofer ISE reports in the 2019 PV report that photovoltaic installations are dominated by crystalline silicon (c-Si) with a market share of over 95% in solar farms and on rooftops. [3] With the rise of the solar power century, photovoltaic applications and installations will go beyond the traditional green field power plants and enter every aspect of our daily life. Urban, naval and space mobility, residential buildings and business towers, all types of facades, portable and Internet of Things (IoT) applications, clothing-almost any aspect of our life can and will be powered by solar energy. While c-Si appears untouchable as leading PV main stream technology for a longer time, many of the new applications which rely on flexibility, transparency, color management, integrability or simply elegant appearance require novel photovoltaic materials and technologies.

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Section: (3 Of 10)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Material Strategies to Accelerate OPV Technology Toward a GW Technology

Brabec

Distler

et al. 2020

Advanced Energy Materials

119

101

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“…[ 17,19–22 ] On the other hand, the present OSCs based on small molecular acceptors (SMAs) exhibit high PCEs, while having relative poor flexibility (stretchability) due to brittle crystalline features of the SMAs. [ 4,23 ] However, all‐polymer solar cells with excellent flexibility (stretchability) exhibit limited PCEs, [ 24,25 ] which lag behind the SMAs‐based OSCs. These impede the application of OSCs in wearable and portable devices.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Universal Method to Enhance Flexibility and Stability of Organic Solar Cells by Constructing Insulating Matrices in Active Layers

Han

Bao

Huang

et al. 2020

Adv Funct Materials

119

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With the rapid development of power conversion efficiency (PCE), flexibility–stability of organic solar cells (OSCs) are becoming one of the primary barriers for commercialization. This work shows that insulating poly(aryl ether) (PAE) resins have highly twisted‐stiff backbones without any side chains, which possess excellent mechanical stability, thermal stability, and good compatibility with organic photovoltaic materials. After introducing 5 wt% PAE resin as supporting matrices into the bulk heterojunction (BHJ) layer, the device yields a high PCE of 16.13%. Importantly, the devices show impressive flexibility and improved stability with passivated morphology, such as PM6/Y6‐based devices with 30 wt% PAE retains the PCE of 15.17% and exhibits enhanced 4.4‐fold elongation at break (25.07%). This is the recorded stretchability of the BHJ layer for OSCs with PCE > 8%, and morphological changes during tensile deformation are first investigated by in situ wide‐angle X‐ray scattering measurements. The PAE matrices strategy exhibits good universality in the other four photovoltaic systems. These results demonstrate that heat‐resistant PAE resins serve as supporting matrices with a tunneling effect into OSCs without sacrificing photovoltaic performance and simultaneously improve the flexibility and stability of devices, which can play an important role in promoting the development of stable and wearable electronics.

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“…[27] The PCEs of all-PSCs have been increased to over 13% with a small energy loss, very recently, mainly benefiting from the optimization of FREA structures ( Figure S3, Supporting Information). [28][29][30] In addition to increasing light absorption, it is also important for polymer acceptors to achieve high electron mobilities. The A-A strategy, which directly combines two electron-deficient building blocks in polymer backbones to construct A-A-type polymers, are expected to improve n-type character and increase electron transport property of the resulting polymer acceptors.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To the best of our knowledge, 8.7 × 10 −4 cm 2 V −1 s −1 was the highest values in FREA-based polymer acceptors. [17,[27][28][29] To probe the photovoltaic performance of two polymer acceptors, all-PSCs with a conventional device structure of ITO/PEDOT:PSS/active layer/PDINO/Al were fabricated and measured following the reliable measuring procedure using an illumination mask. [38] The active area was defined by a metal mask with an aperture aligned with the device area.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A Narrow‐Bandgap n‐Type Polymer with an Acceptor–Acceptor Backbone Enabling Efficient All‐Polymer Solar Cells

et al. 2020

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of these FREAs can be fine-tuned by optimizing the intramolecular charge transfer character while maintaining their key characteristics as efficient electron acceptor materials. [4-6] The FREAs with fine-tailored properties enable the state-of-the-art power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) surpassing 16% in OSCs. [7-12] Among various OSCs, all-polymer solar cells (all-PSCs) employing conjugated polymers as both the electron donors and acceptors, have recently attracted great attention because of some unique advantages including superior stability and mechanical robustness. [13-20] However, only a few polymer acceptors can yield PCEs over 8% till now (see Figure S1 and Table S1, Supporting Information) due to the scarcity of highly electron-deficient building blocks. For instance, classical naphthalene diimide and perylene diimidebased donor-acceptor (D-A)-type polymer acceptors (see Figure S2a, Supporting Information) suffer from poor absorption coefficient in the long-wavelength region and (or) the localized lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO), which limits the short-circuit currents density (J sc) and V oc , together with Narrow-bandgap polymer semiconductors are essential for advancing the development of organic solar cells. Here, a new narrow-bandgap polymer acceptor L14, featuring an acceptor-acceptor (A-A) type backbone, is synthesized by copolymerizing a dibrominated fused-ring electron acceptor (FREA) with distannylated bithiophene imide. Combining the advantages of both the FREA and the A-A polymer, L14 not only shows a narrow bandgap and high absorption coefficient, but also low-lying frontier molecular orbital (FMO) levels. Such FMO levels yield improved electron transfer character, but unexpectedly, without sacrificing open-circuit voltage (V oc), which is attributed to a small nonradiative recombination loss (E loss,nr) of 0.22 eV. Benefiting from the improved photocurrent along with the high fill factor and V oc , an excellent efficiency of 14.3% is achieved, which is among the highest values for all-polymer solar cells (all-PSCs). The results demonstrate the superiority of narrow-bandgap A-A type polymers for improving all-PSC performance and pave a way toward developing high-performance polymer acceptors for all-PSCs.

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14.4% efficiency all-polymer solar cell with broad absorption and low energy loss enabled by a novel polymer acceptor

Cited by 299 publications

References 56 publications

Material Strategies to Accelerate OPV Technology Toward a GW Technology

Material Strategies to Accelerate OPV Technology Toward a GW Technology

A Universal Method to Enhance Flexibility and Stability of Organic Solar Cells by Constructing Insulating Matrices in Active Layers

A Narrow‐Bandgap n‐Type Polymer with an Acceptor–Acceptor Backbone Enabling Efficient All‐Polymer Solar Cells

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