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High-performance all-polymer solar cells with only 0.47 eV energy loss

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Abstract

The field of all-polymer solar cells (all-PSCs) has experienced rapid development during the past few years, mainly driven by the development of efficient polymer acceptors. However, the power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) of the all-PSCs are still limited by insufficient light absorption of the donor/acceptor blend and large energy loss in devices. We herein designed a polymer acceptor PYT1 constructed n-type molecular acceptor Y5-C20 as the key building block and blended it with a polymer donor PM6 to obtain an all-polymer photoactive layer. The optimized PM6:PYT1 all-PSCs achieved a record higher PCE of 13.43% with a very low energy loss of 0.47 eV and a photoresponse of up to 900 nm compared with the Y5-C20 based device with a best PCE of 9.42%. Furthermore, the PCEs of the PM6:PYT1 all-PSCs are relatively insensitive to the 1-chloronaphthalene (CN) additive contents and active layer thickness. Our results also highlight the effect of CN additive on PM6:PYT1 morphology, i.e., charge generation, and transport find an optimized balance, and radiative and non-radiative loss is simultaneously reduced in the blend. This work promotes the development of high-performance polymer acceptors and heralds a brighter future of all-PSCs for commercial applications.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21702154, 51773157), and the opening projects of Key Laboratory of Materials Processing and Mold and Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences (BNLMS201905). This work was performed in part on the SAXS/WAXS beamline at the Australian Synchrotron, part of ANSTO.

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  1. These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Institute for Advanced Studies, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430072, China

    Qiang Wu, Wei Wang, Tao Wang, Rui Sun, Jing Guo, Yao Wu & Jie Min

  2. Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China

    Yongfang Li & Jie Min

  3. Key Laboratory of Materials Processing and Mold (Ministry of Education), Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, 450002, China

    Jie Min

  4. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Monash University; Australian Synchrotron, Clayton, Victoria, Australia

    Xuechen Jiao

  5. Institute of Materials for Electronics and Energy Technology (i-MEET), Friedrich-Alexander-Universität-Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany

    Christoph J. Brabec

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  1. Qiang Wu
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  2. Wei Wang
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  3. Tao Wang
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Correspondence to Jie Min.

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Wu, Q., Wang, W., Wang, T. et al. High-performance all-polymer solar cells with only 0.47 eV energy loss. Sci. China Chem. 63, 1449–1460 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11426-020-9785-7

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