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Chlorinated polymerized small molecule acceptor enabling ternary all-polymer solar cells with over 16.6% efficiency

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Abstract

Recently, all-polymer solar cells (all-PSCs) based on polymerized small molecule acceptors (PSMAs) have achieved significant progress. Ternary blending has proven to be an effective strategy to further boost the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of the all-PSCs. Herein, a new A-DA’D-A small-molecule acceptor-based PSMA (named as PYCl-T) was designed and synthesized, which possesses similar polymer backbone with the widely used PY-IT, but with chlorine substitution on the A-end groups in the A-DA’D-A structure. PYCl-T was then employed as the third component into the PM6:PY-IT system and the ternary all-PSCs based on PM6:PY-IT:PYCl-T demonstrated a high PCE of 16.62% (certified value of 16.3%). Moreover, the PCE of 15.52% was realized in the enlarged ternary all-PSCs with effective area of 1 cm2, indicating the great potential in large-scale applications. Moreover, the optimized ternary blend films of PM6:PY-IT:PYCl-T show excellent thermal stability at 150 °C. This work demonstrates that the utilization of a ternary blend system involving two well-compatible PSMA polymer acceptors is an effective strategy to boost the performance of the all-PSCs.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2019YFA0705900) funded by MOST, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51820105003, 21734008, 61904181, 52173188, 21704082, 21875182), and the Basic and Applied Basic Research Major Program of Guangdong Province (2019B030302007). Key Scientific and Technological Innovation Team Project of Shaanxi Province (2020TD-002), and 111 Project 2.0 (BP2018008).

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  1. These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Chemical Science, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Ke Hu, Jiaqi Du, Can Zhu, Wenbin Lai, Zhanjun Zhang, Lei Meng & Yongfang Li

  2. Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, CAS Key Laboratory of Organic Solids, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China

    Ke Hu, Jiaqi Du, Can Zhu, Wenbin Lai, Jinyuan Zhang, Lei Meng & Yongfang Li

  3. Key Laboratory of Photochemical Conversion and Optoelectronic Materials, Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China

    Jing Li

  4. State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710049, China

    Jingming Xin & Wei Ma

  5. Laboratory of Advanced Optoelectronic Materials, Suzhou Key Laboratory of Novel Semiconductor-optoelectronics Materials and Devices, College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Soochow University, Suzhou, 215123, China

    Yongfang Li

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  1. Ke Hu
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Correspondence to Zhanjun Zhang, Jinyuan Zhang, Lei Meng or Yongfang Li.

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Supporting information The supporting information is available online at http://chem.scichina.com and http://link.springer.com/journal/11426. The supporting materials are published as submitted, without typesetting or editing. The responsibility for scientific accuracy and content remains entirely with the authors.

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Hu, K., Du, J., Zhu, C. et al. Chlorinated polymerized small molecule acceptor enabling ternary all-polymer solar cells with over 16.6% efficiency. Sci. China Chem. 65, 954–963 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11426-022-1219-7

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