Sequential Processing Enables 17% All-Polymer Solar Cells via Non-Halogen Organic Solvent

Abstract

All-polymer solar cells (All-PSCs), whose electron donor and acceptors are both polymeric materials, have attracted great research attention in the past few years. However, most all-PSC devices with top-of-the-line efficiencies are processed from chloroform. In this work, we apply the sequential processing (SqP) method to fabricate All-PSCs from an aromatic hydrocarbon solvent, toluene, and obtain efficiencies up to 17.0%. By conducting a series of characterizations on our films and devices, we demonstrate that the preparation of SqP devices using toluene can effectively reduce carrier recombination, enhance carrier mobility and promote the fill factor of the device.

18.1% Ternary All‐Polymer Solar Cells Sequentially Processed from Hydrocarbon Solvent with Enhanced Stability

“…[35][36][37][38][39][40] Unlike BC method that relies on complicated solvent evaporation and spontaneous phase separation of the two species during morphology evolution, in SqP, the donor and acceptor have a better chance to maintain and form their crystalline regions more independently. [41][42][43][44] On the basis of our previous work on SqP, [21,[45][46][47][48][49] herein, we demonstrate a big leap in terms of efficiency in SqP all-PSC devices that address the aforementioned problems. We combine SqP and the ternary blend strategy, and fabricated a series of highly efficient SqP devices using PM6 as the donor and PY-V-𝛾 and PJ1-𝛾 as acceptors, which are processed from the aromatic hydrocarbon solvent, toluene(Tol).…”

“…By contrast, when using the SqP method, the J SC and FF of PY‐V‐ γ and PJ1‐ γ ‐based devices were significantly improved, leading to an increase in the efficiency of the binary SqP devices to 17.0% and 17.2%, respectively, which is consistent with previous studies. [ 46 ]…”

Advances in layer-by-layer processing for efficient and reliable organic solar cells

“…Zhao, et al fabricated LBL all-polymer OSCs using PM6 as the donor and PY-V-g polymer as the acceptor using toluene as the processing solvent and achieved a PCE of about 17% that was higher than the BHJ counterpart (16.3%), attributing to the improved vertical phase segregation, reduced charge carrier recombination and balanced charge transport. 183 In summary, for all-polymer OSCs the polymer morphology in the active layer could be efficiently controlled by LBL processing leading to efficient and stable devices. This led to the optimized vertical phase separation as well as polymer microstructures formation in LBL-processed OSCs compared with that in BHJ films.…”

“…Zhao, et al fabricated LBL all-polymer OSCs using PM6 as the donor and PY-V-γ polymer as the acceptor using toluene as the processing solvent and achieved a PCE of about 17% that was higher than the BHJ counterpart (16.3%), attributing to the improved vertical phase segregation, reduced charge carrier recombination and balanced charge transport. 183…”

Highly efficient and stable binary all-polymer solar cells enabled by sequential deposition processing tuned microstructures

“…Though this gap has been successfully alleviated by the new concept of a polymerized small molecular acceptor (PSMA), specifically PCEs are now over 16% in multiple cases. [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29] Nonetheless, the operational and mechanical stability difficulties come back again, due to PSMAs partially inheriting the properties of small molecules. [30][31][32][33] Since current PSMA-type materials are the most promising candidates for high-efficiency, more efforts in boosting device stability are required that rely not only on chemistry innovation, but also effective device fabrication methods.…”