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A ternary organic solar cell with 300 nm thick active layer shows over 14% efficiency

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Abstract

In order to meet the requirements for making organic solar cells (OSCs) through solution printing techniques, great efforts have been devoted into developing high performance OSCs with relatively thicker active layers. In this work, a thick-film (300 nm) ternary OSC with a power conversion efficiency of 14.3% is fabricated by introducing phenyl-C61-butyric-acid-methyl ester (PC61BM) into a PBDB-T-2Cl:BTP-4F host blend. The addition of PC61BM is found to be helpful for improving the hole and electron mobilities, and thus facilitates charge transport as well as suppresses charge recombination in the active layers, leading to the improved efficiencies of OSCs with relatively thicker active layers. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of employing fullerene derivative PC61BM to construct a high-efficiency thick-film ternary device, which would promote the development of thick layer ternary OSCs to fulfill the requirements of future roll to roll production.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21835006, 21704004, 91633301, 51673201), the Chinese Academy of Sciences (KJZD-EW-J01). We would like to thank the Innovation Project supported by Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences (BNLMS-CXXM-201903)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry, Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular, Sciences CAS Research/Education Center for Excellence in Molecular Sciences, Institute of Chemistry Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China

    Lijiao Ma, Ye Xu, Yunfei Zu, Qing Liao, Bowei Xu, Cunbin An, Shaoqing Zhang & Jianhui Hou

  2. School of Chemistry and Biology Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, 100083, China

    Shaoqing Zhang

  3. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Lijiao Ma, Ye Xu, Yunfei Zu, Qing Liao & Jianhui Hou

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  1. Lijiao Ma
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  2. Ye Xu
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  3. Yunfei Zu
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  4. Qing Liao
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Correspondence to Shaoqing Zhang.

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Ma, L., Xu, Y., Zu, Y. et al. A ternary organic solar cell with 300 nm thick active layer shows over 14% efficiency. Sci. China Chem. 63, 21–27 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11426-019-9556-7

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