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Rationally pairing photoactive materials for high-performance polymer solar cells with efficiency of 16.53%

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Abstract

The emergence of non-fullerene acceptors (NFA) offers a promising opportunity to develop high-performance donor/acceptor pairs with high power conversion efficiency, as NFAs offer tunable energy levels, broad absorption and suitable aggregation property. In order to enhance light-harvesting capability of active layers, we choose a wide bandgap polymer PTQ10 as the donor to blend with a narrow bandgap NFA Y6 as the acceptor. In comparison with PTQ10:IDIC blend, ~130 nm red-shifted absorption spectrum is observed in the PTQ10:Y6 blend, which potentially enhance the short-circuit current density (Jsc) for the PSCs. In addition, the optimal PTQ10:Y6 blend shows higher photoluminescence quenching efficiency and more efficient charge separation, higher charge mobilities, as well as weaker bimolecular recombination over the PTQ10:IDIC blend, which leads to an outstanding power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 16.53%, with a notable Jsc of 26.65 mA cm−2 and fill factor (FF) of 0.751.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51873140, 51603136, 91633301).

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Correspondence to Chaohua Cui or Yongfang Li.

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Wu, Y., Zheng, Y., Yang, H. et al. Rationally pairing photoactive materials for high-performance polymer solar cells with efficiency of 16.53%. Sci. China Chem. 63, 265–271 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11426-019-9599-1

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