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Oxoammonium enabled secondary doping of hole transporting material PEDOT:PSS for high-performance organic solar cells

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Abstract

Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS) is one of the most widely used hole transporting materials in organic solar cells (OSCs). Multiple strategies have been adopted to improve the conductivity of PEDOT:PSS, however, effective strategy that can optimize the conductivity, work function, and surface energy simultaneously to reach a better energy alignment and interface contact is rare. Here, we demonstrate that oxoammonium salts (TEMPO+X−) with different counterions can act as facile and novel dopants to realize secondary doping of PEDOT:PSS. The effective charge transfer process achieved between TEMPO+X− and PEDOT:PSS results in enhanced carrier density and improved conductivity of PEDOT:PSS. Moreover, different counterions of TEMPO+X− can tune the work function and surface energy of PEDOT:PSS, enabling improved device performances. The resulting device with PM6:Y6 as the active layer shows a high power conversion efficiency (PCE) over 16%. Moreover, this doping strategy can also be applied to other conjugated polymers such as poly(3-hexylthiophene). This work provides a promising strategy to tune the properties of conjugated polymers through doping, thus effectively boosting the performance of organic solar cells.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21634004), the Basic and Applied Basic Research Major Program of Guangdong Province (2019B030302007), and the Foundation of Guangzhou Science and Technology Project (201707020019).

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  1. These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Luminescent Materials and Devices, Institute of Polymer Optoelectronic Materials and Devices, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510640, China

    Haoran Tang, Zixian Liu, Zhicheng Hu, Yuanying Liang, Fei Huang & Yong Cao

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  1. Haoran Tang
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  2. Zixian Liu
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  3. Zhicheng Hu
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  4. Yuanying Liang
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  5. Fei Huang
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  6. Yong Cao
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Correspondence to Fei Huang.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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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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Tang, H., Liu, Z., Hu, Z. et al. Oxoammonium enabled secondary doping of hole transporting material PEDOT:PSS for high-performance organic solar cells. Sci. China Chem. 63, 802–809 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11426-020-9729-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11426-020-9729-y

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