New Phase for Organic Solar Cell Research: Emergence of Y-Series Electron Acceptors and Their Perspectives

Abstract

With the recent emergence of a new class of high-performance nonfullerene acceptors (NFAs), organic solar cells (OSCs) have entered a new phase of research featuring high power conversion efficiencies (PCEs). In this Perspective, we summarize the recent progress made from Y-series NFAs and the matched polymer donors and analyze the molecular design strategies for boosting device performance. We also perform a PCE prediction of OSCs and propose requirements for NFAs, aiming at a PCE of 20%, which is comparable to those of Si and perovskite-based counterparts. Finally, we assess three factors of efficiency, stability, and cost and outline the challenges facing OSCs and the future development directions of OSCs. This work is expected to provide valuable suggestions with a comprehensive view to advance practical application of OSCs.

Evaluation-oriented exploration of photo energy conversion systems: from fundamental optoelectronics and material screening to the combination with data science

“…This is possibly because RF is tolerant of noise data (incorrect or exceptional data) and leads to high accuracy even in a small dataset, whereas ANN requires a large dataset (>tens of thousands entries) with minimal noise data included. The ML study of polymer:fullerene acceptor (FA) was further evolved to polymer:nonfullerene (NFA) that recently demonstrated a remarkable improvement in PCE of up to~18% [124][125][126][127]. The RF ML model of polymer:NFA (~500 entries) constructed in the same way as that of polymer:FA exhibited an improved r of 0.85 [128,129].…”

Recent Advances Toward Highly Efficient Tandem Organic Solar Cells

“…[200] Unlike the A-D-A-type NFAs, the Y-series fused-ring NFAs contain an electron-deficient core and two pyrrole rings, leading to narrow bandgap NFAs (1.3-1.4 eV) with the high electron mobility and low energy loss. [201] The Y-series fused-ring NFAs, like (2, www.advancedsciencenews.com www.small-structures.com bringing a new phase for OSC researches. Despite their great success, very limited studies focused on their applications in tandem OSCs at present.…”

Universal and versatile morphology engineering via hot fluorous solvent soaking for organic bulk heterojunction

“…The post-treatments, including thermal annealing (TA), solvent vapor annealing (SVA) and solvent soaking (SS), are commonly applicable for most of OSCs 8 , 9 . For example, almost all reported OSCs with power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) over 15% can gain further promotion in device performance by utilizing TA 20 – 31 . However, a high annealing temperature is often required to initiate the molecular reorganization in TA, therefore it is not suitable for polymer substrates of flexible device, which is considered as one of the most promising applications of OSCs 32 .…”