communications Solar Cells
Selecting a Donor Polymer for Realizing Favorable Morphology in Efficient Non-fullerene Acceptor-based Solar Cells Long Ye, Wei Jiang, Wenchao Zhao, Shaoqing Zhang, Deping Qian, Zhaohui Wang,* and Jianhui Hou* Fullerene-based polymer solar cells (PSCs), namely utilizing polymers as electron donors and fullerene derivatives as electron acceptors, have been the subject of organic photovoltaic and the predominant type of polymer solar cells in the past decade.[1–6] Although fullerene derivatives like [6,6]-phenylC61 (or C71)-butyric acid methyl ester (PC61BM or PC71BM) have made great success, they still have several drawbacks, including poor absorption of visible light for PC61BM and high cost for PC71BM, which limit their practical applications.[7] In contrast, non-fullerene acceptors can be easily produced in large scale at low cost and chemically modified with highly tunable absorption spectra and energy levels than those of fullerene derivatives.[8,9] Encouragingly, Facchetti et al.[10] reported a record power conversion efficiency (PCE) of ≈6.4% in polymer:polymer blend-based PSCs, which demonstrated the great potential of fullerene-free PSCs and significantly promoted the research in the field. Beyond polymers,[11–16] a variety of non-fullerene small molecules[17–32] have been explored as alternatives to fullerene-based acceptors in recent years, while most of them exhibited relatively poor photovoltaic performance in PSCs. How to rationally select a polymer donor so as to get suitable phase separation with non-fullerene acceptors is still a challenge in the studies of non-fullerene-based PSCs.[18–20] As L. Ye, W. Zhao, S. Zhang, D. Qian, Prof. J. Hou State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences Institute of Chemistry Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing 100190, P. R. China E-mail: [email protected] L. Ye University of Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing 100049, P. R. China Dr. W. Jiang, Prof. Z. Wang CAS Key Laboratory of Organic Solids Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences Institute of Chemistry Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing 100190, P. R. China E-mail: [email protected] DOI: 10.1002/smll.201401082
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wileyonlinelibrary.com
known, it is crucial to explore new photovoltaic materials and new methods that can lead to favorable morphologies. In a recent work, Chabinyc et al. designed a novel non-fullerene small molecule, which was utilized in non-fullerene-based PSCs as the acceptor material that performs with poly(3hexylthiophene) (P3HT) as well as various low band gap polymers; however, the photovoltaic performances of the devices were relatively poor, that is, PCE
Selecting a Donor Polymer for Realizing Favorable Morphology in Efficient Non-fullerene Acceptor-based Solar Cells Long Ye, Wei Jiang, Wenchao Zhao, Shaoqing Zhang, Deping Qian, Zhaohui Wang,* and Jianhui Hou* Fullerene-based polymer solar cells (PSCs), namely utilizing polymers as electron donors and fullerene derivatives as electron acceptors, have been the subject of organic photovoltaic and the predominant type of polymer solar cells in the past decade.[1–6] Although fullerene derivatives like [6,6]-phenylC61 (or C71)-butyric acid methyl ester (PC61BM or PC71BM) have made great success, they still have several drawbacks, including poor absorption of visible light for PC61BM and high cost for PC71BM, which limit their practical applications.[7] In contrast, non-fullerene acceptors can be easily produced in large scale at low cost and chemically modified with highly tunable absorption spectra and energy levels than those of fullerene derivatives.[8,9] Encouragingly, Facchetti et al.[10] reported a record power conversion efficiency (PCE) of ≈6.4% in polymer:polymer blend-based PSCs, which demonstrated the great potential of fullerene-free PSCs and significantly promoted the research in the field. Beyond polymers,[11–16] a variety of non-fullerene small molecules[17–32] have been explored as alternatives to fullerene-based acceptors in recent years, while most of them exhibited relatively poor photovoltaic performance in PSCs. How to rationally select a polymer donor so as to get suitable phase separation with non-fullerene acceptors is still a challenge in the studies of non-fullerene-based PSCs.[18–20] As L. Ye, W. Zhao, S. Zhang, D. Qian, Prof. J. Hou State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences Institute of Chemistry Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing 100190, P. R. China E-mail: [email protected] L. Ye University of Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing 100049, P. R. China Dr. W. Jiang, Prof. Z. Wang CAS Key Laboratory of Organic Solids Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences Institute of Chemistry Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing 100190, P. R. China E-mail: [email protected] DOI: 10.1002/smll.201401082
4658
wileyonlinelibrary.com
known, it is crucial to explore new photovoltaic materials and new methods that can lead to favorable morphologies. In a recent work, Chabinyc et al. designed a novel non-fullerene small molecule, which was utilized in non-fullerene-based PSCs as the acceptor material that performs with poly(3hexylthiophene) (P3HT) as well as various low band gap polymers; however, the photovoltaic performances of the devices were relatively poor, that is, PCE
