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Enhanced photovoltaic performance of PM6/Y6-based organic solar cells by a wide-bandgap small molecule acceptor

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Abstract

Considering rare researches on wide-bandgap nonfullerene acceptors for ternary organic solar cells (OSCs), we reported a small molecule acceptor ITCN as the second acceptor for constructing PM6/Y6/ITCN ternary devices with better photovoltaic performance in this work. ITCN exhibits a large bandgap of 2.19 eV and a higher LUMO (the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital) than Y6, resulting in complementary optical absorption in the short-wavelength region and increased open-circuit voltage (VOC). As the content of ITCN increases, the hole mobilities increase continuously and the electron mobilities increase to a maximum value. Moreover, the incorporation of ITCN improves the nanoscale morphology and charge transport property to some extent. From PM6/Y6-based binary device to PM6/Y6/ITCN-based ternary device, the power conversion efficiency is increased from 15.01 to 16.04% with simultaneously enhanced VOC, short-circuit current, and fill factor. These results indicate that the design of wide-bandgap acceptors for high-performance ternary OSCs is available.

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Data availability

The authors declare that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the paper and its Supplementary Information files.

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Funding

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51703049, 21975059) and Hebei Natural Science Foundation (No. B2021407003).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Chemical Engineering, Hebei Normal University of Science & Technology, Qinhuangdao, 066004, China

    Shu Yang, Dan Luo & Xingxing Shen

  2. Key Laboratory of Nanosystem and Hierarchical Fabrication, National Center for Nanoscience and Technology, Beijing, 100190, China

    Junxiu Pan & Yajie Zhang

  3. College of Agronomy and Biotechnology, Hebei Normal University of Science & Technology, Qinhuangdao, 066004, China

    Suxia Wu

  4. Hebei Key Laboratory of Active Components and Functions in Natural Products, Hebei Normal University of Science & Technology, Qinhuangdao, 066000, China

    Xingxing Shen & Fei Peng

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  1. Shu Yang
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  2. Junxiu Pan
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  4. Dan Luo
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Correspondence to Xingxing Shen or Yajie Zhang.

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Yang, S., Pan, J., Wu, S. et al. Enhanced photovoltaic performance of PM6/Y6-based organic solar cells by a wide-bandgap small molecule acceptor. J Nanopart Res 25, 134 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11051-023-05787-2

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