Subtle Molecular Tailoring Induces Significant Morphology Optimization Enabling over 16% Efficiency Organic Solar Cells with Efficient Charge Generation

Zichun Zhou; Wenrui Liu; Guanqing Zhou; Ming Zhang; Deping Qian; Jianyun Zhang; Shanshan Chen; Shengjie Xu; Changduk Yang; Feng Gao; Haiming Zhu; Feng Liu; Xiaozhang Zhu

doi:10.1002/adma.201906324

Subtle Molecular Tailoring Induces Significant Morphology Optimization Enabling over 16% Efficiency Organic Solar Cells with Efficient Charge Generation

Adv Mater. 2020 Jan;32(4):e1906324. doi: 10.1002/adma.201906324. Epub 2019 Dec 9.

Authors

Zichun Zhou^{1

2}, Wenrui Liu^{1

2}, Guanqing Zhou³, Ming Zhang³, Deping Qian⁴, Jianyun Zhang^{1

2}, Shanshan Chen^{5

6}, Shengjie Xu¹, Changduk Yang⁶, Feng Gao⁴, Haiming Zhu⁷, Feng Liu³, Xiaozhang Zhu^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, CAS Key Laboratory of Organic Solids, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China.
² School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China.
³ Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China.
⁴ Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology, Linköping University, Linköping, 58183, Sweden.
⁵ MOE Key Laboratory of Low-grade Energy Utilization Technologies and Systems, CQU-NUS Renewable Energy Materials and Devices Joint Laboratory, School of Energy and Power Engineering, Chongqing University, Chongqing, 400044, China.
⁶ Department of Energy Engineering, School of Energy and Chemical Engineering, Perovtronics Research Center, Low Dimensional Carbon Materials Center, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), Ulsan, 44919, Republic of Korea.
⁷ Department of Chemistry, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, China.

PMID: 31815332
DOI: 10.1002/adma.201906324

Abstract

Manipulating charge generation in a broad spectral region has proved to be crucial for nonfullerene-electron-acceptor-based organic solar cells (OSCs). 16.64% high efficiency binary OSCs are achieved through the use of a novel electron acceptor AQx-2 with quinoxaline-containing fused core and PBDB-TF as donor. The significant increase in photovoltaic performance of AQx-2 based devices is obtained merely by a subtle tailoring in molecular structure of its analogue AQx-1. Combining the detailed morphology and transient absorption spectroscopy analyses, a good structure-morphology-property relationship is established. The stronger π-π interaction results in efficient electron hopping and balanced electron and hole mobilities attributed to good charge transport. Moreover, the reduced phase separation morphology of AQx-2-based bulk heterojunction blend boosts hole transfer and suppresses geminate recombination. Such success in molecule design and precise morphology optimization may lead to next-generation high-performance OSCs.

Keywords: charge generation; nonfullerene acceptors; organic solar cells; power conversion efficiency; solar cell morphology.

Abstract

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