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Morphological characterization of fullerene and fullerene-free organic photovoltaics by combined real and reciprocal space techniques

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Abstract

Morphology can play a critical role in determining function in organic photovoltaic (OPV) systems. Recently molecular acceptors have showed promise to replace fullerene derivatives as acceptor materials in bulk heterojunction solar cells and have achieved >10% efficiencies in single junction devices. The nearly identical mass/electron densities between the donor (polymer) and acceptor (molecule) materials results in poor material contrast compared to fullerene-based OPVs and therefore morphology characterization using techniques that rely on mass/electron density variations poses a challenge. This inhibits a fundamental understanding of the structure–property relationships for non-fullerene acceptor materials. We demonstrate that low angle annular dark field scanning transmission electron microscopy and resonant soft X-ray scattering form a set of complementary tools that can provide quantitative characterization of fullerene as well as non-fullerene based organic photovoltaic systems.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Beamline support at beamline 11.0.1.2 was provided by A.L.D. Kilcoyne and C. Wang. Beamline support at beamline 7.3.3 was provided by C. Zhu and E. Schaible. Beamlines 11.0.1.2 and 7.3.3 at the Advanced Light Source are supported by the Director of the Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231. H. Ade is supported by ONR contract N00141512322. Michael B. Katz (MSED, NIST) is acknowledged for conducting the BF-TEM characterizations. Thomas Ferron and Brian A. Collins (WSU) are acknowledged for conducting the NEXAFS characterizations. S. M. gratefully acknowledges valuable discussions with Wen-Li Wu (NIST).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Material Measurement Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, Maryland, 20899, USA

    Subhrangsu Mukherjee, Andrew A. Herzing, Dean M. DeLongchamp & Lee J. Richter

  2. Department of Chemistry and The James Franck Institute, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, 60637, USA

    Donglin Zhao, Qinghe Wu & Luping Yu

  3. Department of Physics and Organic and Carbon Electronics Laboratory, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, 27695, USA

    Harald Ade

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  1. Subhrangsu Mukherjee
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  2. Andrew A. Herzing
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  5. Luping Yu
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  7. Dean M. DeLongchamp
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  8. Lee J. Richter
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Correspondence to Lee J. Richter.

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This author was an editor of this journal during the review and decision stage. For the JMR policy on review and publication of manuscripts authored by editors, please refer to http://www.mrs.org/editor-manuscripts/.

Supplementary Material

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Supplementary Information: Morphological characterization of fullerene and fullerene-free organic photovoltaics by combined real and reciprocal space techniques (approximately 208 KB)

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Mukherjee, S., Herzing, A.A., Zhao, D. et al. Morphological characterization of fullerene and fullerene-free organic photovoltaics by combined real and reciprocal space techniques. Journal of Materials Research 32, 1921–1934 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2017.131

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2017.131

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