Eco-compatible and highly efficient organic solar cells with an aggregation-controlled terpolymer strategy. Issue 48 (1st December 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Kim, Jinseck; Kyeong, Minju; Ha, Jong-Woon; Ahn, Hyungju; Jung, Juhyoung; Seo, Soodeok; Phan, Tan Ngoc-Lan; Lee, Changjin; Yoon, Sung Cheol; Kim, Bumjoon J.; Ko, Seo-Jin
• Is Part Of: Journal of materials chemistry. Volume 9:Issue 48(2021)
• Page Start: 27551
• Page End: 27559
• Publication Date: 2021-12-01
• Subjects: Materials -- Research -- Periodicals; Chemistry, Analytic -- Periodicals; Environmental sciences -- Research -- Periodicals; 543.0284
• DOI: 10.1039/d1ta08510g
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2050-7488

Abstract

Abstract : Our work presents a strategy for the development of eco-compatible highly efficient organic solar cells with sufficient solubility and optimized aggregation by introducing an ester-substituted thiophene. Abstract : Owing to the development of highly efficient donor and non-fullerene small-molecule acceptor materials, the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of organic solar cells (OSCs) has reached 17–19%. However, most of the highest-efficiency OSC devices still use a toxic halogen solvent in their device fabrication process, which dilutes their potential for scale-up production. In this study, we report a terpolymer strategy to develop donor polymers via an eco-friendly process by controlling the aggregation behavior. By introducing ethyl thiophene-3-carboxylate (ET) into the molecular structure of D18, the consequential solubility is improved significantly enough for dissolution in eco-compatible solvents, while preserving adequate aggregation. As a result, the newly developed terpolymers (PD s) can be processed with an eco-compatible solvent, o -xylene, and an OSC consisting of a PD with 10 mol% ET and Y6-BO exhibits an outstanding PCE of 15.5%, without any treatments such as additive addition, solvent vapor annealing, or thermal annealing. This excellent OSC performance is attributed to the superior charge carrier mobility, suppressed trap-assisted recombination, and substantial semi-crystalline behavior of the o -xylene processed PBET10:Y6-BO blend films. In addition, our o -xylene-based device shows a very good thermal stability of 90% retention of the initial PCE for 300 h in a 100 °C environment.