Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Non-fullerene acceptor with asymmetric structure and phenyl-substituted alkyl side chain for 20.2% efficiency organic solar cells

  • Article
  • Published:

From Nature Energy

View current issue Submit your manuscript

Abstract

For organic solar cells (OSCs), bridging the gap with Shockley–Queisser limit necessitates simultaneously reducing the energy loss for a high open-circuit voltage, improving light utilization for enhanced short-circuit current density and maintaining ideal nanomorphology with a high fill factor through molecular design and device engineering. Here we design and synthesize an asymmetric non-fullerene acceptor (Z8) featuring tethered phenyl groups to establish an alloy acceptor in ternary OSCs. The asymmetric structure minimizes non-radiative energy loss and charge recombination owing to delocalized excitons. The phenyl-substituted alkyl side chain impacts on the intermolecular interactions, improving the film nanomorphology with efficient exciton dissociation and reduced charge recombination. We demonstrate OSCs with an efficiency of 20.2% (certified 19.8%) based on the D18:Z8:L8-BO ternary blend. Through theoretical calculations, we examine the overall distribution of photon and carrier losses and analyse the potential for improvement on open-circuit voltage, short-circuit current density and fill factor, providing rational guidance for further development of the OSC performance.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1: Materials and device performance.
Fig. 2: Charge dynamics analysis.
Fig. 3: Morphology characterizations.
Fig. 4: Theoretical evaluation.

Similar content being viewed by others

Data availability

The authors declare all data supporting the findings of this study are available within the manuscript and Supplementary Information. Source data are provided with this paper.

References

  1. Yao, H. et al. Molecular design of benzodithiophene-based organic photovoltaic materials. Chem. Rev. 116, 7397–7457 (2016).

    Google Scholar 

  2. Guo, X. et al. Polymer solar cells with enhanced fill factors. Nat. Photon. 7, 825–833 (2013).

    Google Scholar 

  3. Liang, Y. et al. For the bright future—bulk heterojunction polymer solar cells with power conversion efficiency of 7.4%. Adv. Mater. 22, E135–E138 (2010).

    Google Scholar 

  4. Vohra, V. et al. Efficient inverted polymer solar cells employing favourable molecular orientation. Nat. Photon. 9, 403–408 (2015).

    Google Scholar 

  5. Yuan, J. et al. Enabling low voltage losses and high photocurrent in fullerene-free organic photovoltaics. Nat. Commun. 10, 570 (2019).

    Google Scholar 

  6. Yuan, J. et al. Single-junction organic solar cell with over 15% efficiency using fused-ring acceptor with electron-deficient core. Joule 3, 1140–1151 (2019).

    Google Scholar 

  7. Li, C. et al. Non-fullerene acceptors with branched side chains and improved molecular packing to exceed 18% efficiency in organic solar cells. Nat. Energy 6, 605–613 (2021).

    Google Scholar 

  8. Liang, Y. et al. Organic solar cells using oligomer acceptors for improved stability and efficiency. Nat. Energy 7, 1180–1190 (2022).

    Google Scholar 

  9. Baran, D. et al. Reducing the efficiency–stability–cost gap of organic photovoltaics with highly efficient and stable small molecule acceptor ternary solar cells. Nat. Mater. 16, 363–369 (2017).

    Google Scholar 

  10. Lin, Y. et al. An electron acceptor challenging fullerenes for efficient polymer solar cells. Adv. Mater. 27, 1170–1174 (2015).

    Google Scholar 

  11. Zhu, L. et al. Single-junction organic solar cells with over 19% efficiency enabled by a refined double-fibril network morphology. Nat. Mater. 21, 656–663 (2022).

    Google Scholar 

  12. Fu, J. et al. 19.31% binary organic solar cell and low non-radiative recombination enabled by non-monotonic intermediate state transition. Nat. Commun. 14, 1760 (2023).

    Google Scholar 

  13. Wang, D. H. et al. Sequential processing: control of nanomorphology in bulk heterojunction solar cells. Nano Lett. 11, 3163–3168 (2011).

    Google Scholar 

  14. He, Z. et al. Enhanced power-conversion efficiency in polymer solar cells using an inverted device structure. Nat. Photon. 6, 591–595 (2012).

    Google Scholar 

  15. Jiang, Y. et al. An alcohol-dispersed conducting polymer complex for fully printable organic solar cells with improved stability. Nat. Energy 7, 352–359 (2022).

    Google Scholar 

  16. Meng, L. et al. Organic and solution-processed tandem solar cells with 17.3% efficiency. Science 361, eaat2612 (2018).

    Google Scholar 

  17. Zheng, Z. et al. Tandem organic solar cell with 20.2% efficiency. Joule 6, 171–184 (2021).

    Google Scholar 

  18. Holliday, S. et al. A rhodanine flanked nonfullerene acceptor for solution-processed organic photovoltaics. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 137, 898–904 (2015).

    Google Scholar 

  19. Yang, Y. The original design principles of the Y series nonfullerene acceptors, from Y1 to Y6. ACS Nano 15, 18679–18682 (2021).

    Google Scholar 

  20. Yuan, J., Zou, Y. & Jun Yuan The history and development of Y6. Org. Electron. 102, 106436 (2022).

    Google Scholar 

  21. Cui, Y., Xu, Y. & Hou, J. High efficiency and more functions bring a bright future for organic photovoltaic cells. Sci. Bull. 67, 1300–1303 (2022).

    Google Scholar 

  22. Yi, J., Zhang, G., Yu, H. & He, Y. Advantages, challenges and molecular design of different material types used in organic solar cells. Nat. Rev. Mater. 9, 46–62 (2024).

    Google Scholar 

  23. Yao, J. et al. Quantifying losses in open-circuit voltage in solution-processable solar cells. Phys. Rev. Appl. 4, 014020 (2015).

    Google Scholar 

  24. Liu, S. et al. High-efficiency organic solar cells with low non-radiative recombination loss and low energetic disorder. Nat. Photon. 14, 300–305 (2020).

    Google Scholar 

  25. Zhang, G. et al. Delocalization of exciton and electron wavefunction in non-fullerene acceptor molecules enables efficient organic solar cells. Nat. Commun. 11, 3943 (2020).

    Google Scholar 

  26. Zhu, X., Zhang, G., Zhang, J., Yip, H.-L. & Hu, B. Self-stimulated dissociation in non-fullerene organic bulk-heterojunction solar cells. Joule 4, 2443–2457 (2020).

    Google Scholar 

  27. Chen, X.-K. et al. A unified description of non-radiative voltage losses in organic solar cells. Nat. Energy 6, 799–806 (2021).

    Google Scholar 

  28. Eisner, F. D. et al. Hybridization of local exciton and charge-transfer states reduces nonradiative voltage losses in organic solar cells. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 141, 6362–6374 (2019).

    Google Scholar 

  29. Almora, O. et al. Device performance of emerging photovoltaic materials (version 2). Adv. Energy Mater. 11, 2102526 (2021).

    Google Scholar 

  30. Classen, A. et al. The role of exciton lifetime for charge generation in organic solar cells at negligible energy-level offsets. Nat. Energy 5, 711–719 (2020).

    Google Scholar 

  31. Li, S. et al. Refined molecular microstructure and optimized carrier management of multicomponent organic photovoltaics toward 19.3% certified efficiency. Energy Environ. Sci. 16, 2262–2273 (2023).

    Google Scholar 

  32. Proctor, C. M., Kim, C., Neher, D. & Nguyen, T. Nongeminate recombination and charge transport limitations in diketopyrrolopyrrole‐based solution‐processed small molecule solar cells. Adv. Funct. Mater. 23, 3584–3594 (2013).

    Google Scholar 

  33. Lu, L., Kelly, M. A., You, W. & Yu, L. Status and prospects for ternary organic photovoltaics. Nat. Photon. 9, 491–500 (2015).

    Google Scholar 

  34. Zuo, L. et al. Dilution effect for highly efficient multiple-component organic solar cells. Nat. Nanotechnol. 17, 53–60 (2022).

    Google Scholar 

  35. Jiang, K. et al. Suppressed recombination loss in organic photovoltaics adopting a planar–mixed heterojunction architecture. Nat. Energy 7, 1076–1086 (2022).

    Google Scholar 

  36. Chen, T. et al. Compromising charge generation and recombination of organic photovoltaics with mixed diluent strategy for certified 19.4% efficiency. Adv. Mater. 35, 2300400 (2023).

    Google Scholar 

  37. Gasparini, N., Salleo, A., McCulloch, I. & Baran, D. The role of the third component in ternary organic solar cells. Nat. Rev. Mater. 4, 229–242 (2019).

    Google Scholar 

  38. Günther, M. et al. Models and mechanisms of ternary organic solar cells. Nat. Rev. Mater. 8, 456–471 (2023).

    Google Scholar 

  39. Xu, X., Li, Y. & Peng, Q. Ternary blend organic solar cells: understanding the morphology from recent progress. Adv. Mater. 34, 2107476 (2022).

    Google Scholar 

  40. Zhou, Z. et al. High-efficiency small-molecule ternary solar cells with a hierarchical morphology enabled by synergizing fullerene and non-fullerene acceptors. Nat. Energy 3, 952–959 (2018).

    Google Scholar 

  41. Yu, R. et al. Design and application of volatilizable solid additives in non-fullerene organic solar cells. Nat. Commun. 9, 4645 (2018).

    Google Scholar 

  42. Zhan, L. et al. Desired open-circuit voltage increase enables efficiencies approaching 19% in symmetric-asymmetric molecule ternary organic photovoltaics. Joule 6, 662–675 (2022).

    Google Scholar 

  43. Jiang, Y. et al. Suppressing electron–phonon coupling in organic photovoltaics for high-efficiency power conversion. Nat. Commun. 14, 5079 (2023).

    Google Scholar 

  44. Vandewal, K., Tvingstedt, K., Gadisa, A., Inganas, O. & Manca, J. V. On the origin of the open-circuit voltage of polymer-fullerene solar cells. Nat. Mater. 8, 904–909 (2009).

    Google Scholar 

  45. Maurano, A. et al. Transient optoelectronic analysis of charge carrier losses in a selenophene/fullerene blend solar cell. J. Phys. Chem. C 115, 5947–5957 (2011).

    Google Scholar 

  46. Koster, L. J. A., Kemerink, M., Wienk, M. M., Maturová, K. & Janssen, R. A. J. Quantifying bimolecular recombination losses in organic bulk heterojunction solar cells. Adv. Mater. 23, 1670–1674 (2011).

    Google Scholar 

  47. Bartesaghi, D. et al. Competition between recombination and extraction of free charges determines the fill factor of organic solar cells. Nat. Commun. 6, 7083 (2015).

    Google Scholar 

  48. Wetzelaer, G. A. H., Kaap, N. J. V., der, Koster, L. J. A. & Blom, P. W. M. Quantifying bimolecular recombination in organic solar cells in steady state. Adv. Energy Mater. 3, 1130–1134 (2013).

    Google Scholar 

  49. Neher, D., Kniepert, J., Elimelech, A. & Koster, L. J. A. A new figure of merit for organic solar cells with transport-limited photocurrents. Sci. Rep. 6, 24861 (2016).

    Google Scholar 

  50. Rivnay, J., Mannsfeld, S. C. B., Miller, C. E., Salleo, A. & Toney, M. F. Quantitative determination of organic semiconductor microstructure from the molecular to device scale. Chem. Rev. 112, 5488–5519 (2012).

    Google Scholar 

  51. Wang, R. et al. Charge separation from an intra-moiety intermediate state in the high-performance PM6:Y6 organic photovoltaic blend. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 142, 12751–12759 (2020).

    Google Scholar 

  52. Polman, A., Knight, M., Garnett, E. C., Ehrler, B. & Sinke, W. C. Photovoltaic materials: present efficiencies and future challenges. Science 352, aad4424 (2016).

    Google Scholar 

  53. Katsidis, C. C. & Siapkas, D. I. General transfer-matrix method for optical multilayer systems with coherent, partially coherent, and incoherent interference. Appl. Opt. 41, 3978 (2002).

    Google Scholar 

  54. Peng, W. et al. Reducing nonradiative recombination in perovskite solar cells with a porous insulator contact. Science 379, 683–690 (2023).

    Google Scholar 

  55. Haase, F. et al. Laser contact openings for local poly-Si-metal contacts enabling 26.1%-efficient POLO-IBC solar cells. Sol. Energy Mater. Sol. Cells 186, 184–193 (2018).

    Google Scholar 

  56. Frisch, M. J. et al. Gaussian 16 Rev. A.03 (Gaussian, Inc., 2016).

  57. Humphrey, W., Dalke, A. & Schulten, K. VMD: visual molecular dynamics. J. Mol. Graph. 14, 33–38 (1996).

    Google Scholar 

  58. Lu, T. & Chen, F. Multiwfn: a multifunctional wavefunction analyzer. J. Comput. Chem. 33, 580–592 (2012).

    Google Scholar 

  59. Abraham, M. J. et al. GROMACS: high performance molecular simulations through multi-level parallelism from laptops to supercomputers. SoftwareX 1–2, 19–25 (2015).

    Google Scholar 

  60. Wang, J., Wolf, R. M., Caldwell, J. W., Kollman, P. A. & Case, D. A. Development and testing of a general amber force field. J. Comput. Chem. 25, 1157–1174 (2004).

    Google Scholar 

  61. Fox, T. & Kollman, P. A. Application of the RESP methodology in the parametrization of organic solvents. J. Phys. Chem. B 102, 8070–8079 (1998).

    Google Scholar 

  62. Bayly, C. I., Cieplak, P., Cornell, W. & Kollman, P. A. A well-behaved electrostatic potential based method using charge restraints for deriving atomic charges: the RESP model. J. Phys. Chem. 97, 10269–10280 (1993).

    Google Scholar 

  63. Bussi, G., Donadio, D. & Parrinello, M. Canonical sampling through velocity rescaling. J. Chem. Phys. 126, 014101 (2007).

    Google Scholar 

  64. Berendsen, H. J. C., Postma, J. P. M., van Gunsteren, W. F., DiNola, A. & Haak, J. R. Molecular dynamics with coupling to an external bath. J. Chem. Phys. 81, 3684–3690 (1984).

    Google Scholar 

  65. Nosé, S. A unified formulation of the constant temperature molecular dynamics methods. J. Chem. Phys. 81, 511–519 (1984).

    Google Scholar 

  66. Hoover, W. G. Canonical dynamics: equilibrium phase–space distributions. Phys. Rev. A Gen. Phys. 31, 1695–1697 (1985).

    Google Scholar 

  67. Parrinello, M. & Rahman, A. Polymorphic transitions in single crystals: a new molecular dynamics method. J. Appl. Phys. 52, 7182–7190 (1981).

    Google Scholar 

  68. Liu, W. et al. Theory-guided material design enabling high-performance multifunctional semitransparent organic photovoltaics without optical modulations. Adv. Mater. 34, 2200337 (2022).

    Google Scholar 

  69. Li, W. et al. A high-efficiency organic solar cell enabled by the strong intramolecular electron push–pull effect of the nonfullerene acceptor. Adv. Mater. 30, 17071170 (2018).

    Google Scholar 

  70. Cui, Y. et al. Single-junction organic photovoltaic cell with 19% efficiency. Adv. Mater. 33, 2102420 (2021).

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Beijing Natural Science Foundation (Z230019), the National Key R&D Program of China (2019YFA0705900), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB0520202), the International Partnership Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (027GJHZ2022036GC) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (52225305, 22175187 and 22375119). The authors thank C. Zhu, L. Meng and Y. Li for their help with the TPC, TPV and CE measurements, and M. Xie and Z. Wei for their help with the FTPS-EQE and EQEEL measurements, and X. Pu for his help with photo-induced force microscopy measurement, and Y. Ouyang and C. Zhang for their help in TA measurements, and X. Chen, Q. Luo and C. Ma for their help in MMP measurements and Y. Fu and X. Lu for their help in GISAXS measurements.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Yuanyuan Jiang, Shaoming Sun, Renjie Xu.

Authors and Affiliations

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

    Yuanyuan Jiang, Shaoming Sun, Renjie Xu, Feng Liu, Xiaodan Miao, Kerui Liu, Yuanping Yi & Xiaozhang Zhu

  2. School of Chemical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Yuanyuan Jiang, Shaoming Sun, Renjie Xu, Xiaodan Miao, Kerui Liu & Xiaozhang Zhu

  3. Department of Physics and Applied Optics Beijing Area Major Laboratory, Center for Advanced Quantum Studies, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

    Guangliu Ran & Wenkai Zhang

Authors
  1. Yuanyuan Jiang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Shaoming Sun
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Renjie Xu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Feng Liu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Xiaodan Miao
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Guangliu Ran
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Kerui Liu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  8. Yuanping Yi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  9. Wenkai Zhang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  10. Xiaozhang Zhu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

X.Z. and F.L. conceived the study. Y.J. and F.L. fabricated the solar cells and performed the related measurements. S.S. performed theoretical calculations. R.X. and K.L. synthesized the NFAs Z7 and Z8. G.R. and W.Z. performed the TA spectra analysis. X.Z. supervised the project. X.M. and Y.Y. performed MD simulation. The manuscript was mainly written by Y.J., S.S., F.L. and X.Z. All the authors contributed to the data analysis and discussion.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Feng Liu or Xiaozhang Zhu.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Peer review

Peer review information

Nature Energy thanks Yanming Sun, Hin-Lap Yip and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Notes 1–4, Scheme 1, Figs. 1–68, Tables 1–18 and references.

Reporting Summary

Source data

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Jiang, Y., Sun, S., Xu, R. et al. Non-fullerene acceptor with asymmetric structure and phenyl-substituted alkyl side chain for 20.2% efficiency organic solar cells. Nat Energy 9, 975–986 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-024-01557-z

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-024-01557-z

  • Springer Nature Limited

This article is cited by

Search

Navigation