All-Polymer Solar Cells Sequentially Solution Processed from Hydrocarbon Solvent with a Thick Active Layer

Organic solar cells (OSCs) have gained increasing attention. Among the various directions in OSCs, all-polymer solar cells (all-PSCs) have emerged as a highly promising and currently active research area due to their excellent film formation properties, mechanical properties, and thermal stabilities. However, most of the high-efficiency all-PSCs are processed from chloroform with an active layer thickness of ~100 nm. In order to meet the requirements for industrialization, a thicker active layer processed from low-vapor pressure solvents (preferentially a hydrocarbon solvent) is strongly desired. Herein, we employ toluene (a hydrocarbon solvent with a much higher boiling point than chloroform) and a method known as sequential processing (SqP) to mitigate the rapid decline in efficiency with increasing film thickness. We show that SqP enables a more favorable vertical phase segregation that leads to less trap-assisted recombination and enhanced charge extraction and lifetime than blend-cast devices at higher film thicknesses.

[1]  Gang Li,et al.  18.1% Ternary All‐Polymer Solar Cells Sequentially Processed from Hydrocarbon Solvent with Enhanced Stability , 2023, Advanced Energy Materials.

[2]  Gang Li,et al.  An Isomeric Solid Additive Enables High‐Efficiency Polymer Solar Cells Developed Using a Benzo‐Difuran‐Based Donor Polymer , 2023, Advanced materials.

[3]  Yanming Sun,et al.  Over 18% Efficiency of All‐Polymer Solar Cells with Long‐Term Stability Enabled by Y6 as a Solid Additive , 2023, Advanced materials.

[4]  F. Gao,et al.  Near-infrared absorbing acceptor with suppressed triplet exciton generation enabling high performance tandem organic solar cells , 2023, Nature Communications.

[5]  Haiming Zhu,et al.  Compromising Charge Generation and Recombination of Organic Photovoltaics with Mixed Diluent Strategy for Certified 19.4% Efficiency , 2023, Advanced materials.

[6]  Jiaying Wu,et al.  Unveiling the Morphological and Physical Mechanism of Burn‐in Loss Alleviation by Ternary Matrix Toward Stable and Efficient All‐Polymer Solar Cells , 2023, Advanced materials.

[7]  Jianqi Zhang,et al.  Enhancing Photon Utilization Efficiency for High‐Performance Organic Photovoltaic Cells via Regulating Phase‐Transition Kinetics , 2023, Advanced materials.

[8]  A. Jen,et al.  18.2%-efficient ternary all-polymer organic solar cells with improved stability enabled by a chlorinated guest polymer acceptor , 2023, Joule.

[9]  A. Jen,et al.  Boosting the Fill Factor through Sequential Deposition and Homo Hydrocarbon Solvent toward Efficient and Stable All‐Polymer Solar Cells , 2022, Advanced Energy Materials.

[10]  H. Woo,et al.  Regulation of Polymer Configurations Enables Green Solvent‐Processed Large‐Area Binary All‐Polymer Solar Cells With Breakthrough Performance and High Efficiency Stretchability Factor , 2022, Advanced materials.

[11]  Na Yeon Kwon,et al.  Y-Series-Based Polymer Acceptors for High-Performance All-Polymer Solar Cells in Binary and Non-binary Systems , 2022, ACS Energy Letters.

[12]  Shunpu Li,et al.  An Improved Performance of All Polymer Solar Cells enabled by Sequential Processing via Non-halogenated Solvents , 2022, Nano Energy.

[13]  Shunpu Li,et al.  Sequential Processing Enables 17% All-Polymer Solar Cells via Non-Halogen Organic Solvent , 2022, Molecules.

[14]  Shunpu Li,et al.  Efficient All-Polymer Solar Cells Enabled by Interface Engineering , 2022, Polymers.

[15]  W. Ma,et al.  Linker Unit Modulation of Polymer Acceptors Enables Highly Efficient Air‐Processed All‐Polymer Solar Cells , 2022, Advanced science.

[16]  Shuguang Wen,et al.  Synergetic Strategy for Highly Efficient and Super Flexible Thick‐film Organic Solar Cells , 2022, Advanced Energy Materials.

[17]  A. Jen,et al.  Achieving 19% Power Conversion Efficiency in Planar‐Mixed Heterojunction Organic Solar Cells Using a Pseudosymmetric Electron Acceptor , 2022, Advanced materials.

[18]  F. Gao,et al.  Asymmetric electron acceptor enables highly luminescent organic solar cells with certified efficiency over 18% , 2022, Nature Communications.

[19]  J. Nelson,et al.  Single-junction organic solar cells with over 19% efficiency enabled by a refined double-fibril network morphology , 2022, Nature Materials.

[20]  Shunpu Li,et al.  Efficient All-Polymer Solar Cells with Sequentially Processed Active Layers , 2022, Polymers.

[21]  Yaowen Li,et al.  Realizing 17.5% Efficiency Flexible Organic Solar Cells via Atomic-Level Chemical Welding of Silver Nanowire Electrodes. , 2022, Journal of the American Chemical Society.

[22]  Xugang Guo,et al.  Polymer Acceptors for High-Performance All-Polymer Solar Cells. , 2022, Chemistry.

[23]  W. Ma,et al.  Realizing 19.05% Efficiency Polymer Solar Cells by Progressively Improving Charge Extraction and Suppressing Charge Recombination , 2022, Advanced materials.

[24]  Yongsheng Chen,et al.  Recent progress in organic solar cells (Part I material science) , 2021, Science China Chemistry.

[25]  Yanming Sun,et al.  Vertically optimized phase separation with improved exciton diffusion enables efficient organic solar cells with thick active layers , 2021, Nature Communications.

[26]  A. Jen,et al.  Near-infrared Absorbing Polymer Acceptors Enabled by Selenophene-fused Core and Halogenated End-group for Binary all-polymer Solar Cells With Efficiency Over 16% , 2021, Nano Energy.

[27]  Ergang Wang,et al.  Over 18% Ternary Polymer Solar Cells Enabled By A Terpolymer as The Third Component , 2021, Nano Energy.

[28]  Yiwang Chen,et al.  All‐Green Solvent‐Processed Planar Heterojunction Organic Solar Cells with Outstanding Power Conversion Efficiency of 16% , 2021, Advanced Functional Materials.

[29]  Fujun Zhang,et al.  Over 17.7% efficiency ternary-blend organic solar cells with low energy-loss and good thickness-tolerance , 2021 .

[30]  Yongfang Li,et al.  Polymerized Small Molecule Acceptors for High Performance All-polymer Solar Cells. , 2020, Angewandte Chemie.

[31]  Bryon W. Larson,et al.  Single-layered organic photovoltaics with double cascading charge transport pathways: 18% efficiencies , 2020, Nature communications.

[32]  Jianhui Hou,et al.  A ternary organic solar cell with 300 nm thick active layer shows over 14% efficiency , 2020, Science China Chemistry.

[33]  Yongsheng Chen,et al.  High Performance Thick‐Film Nonfullerene Organic Solar Cells with Efficiency over 10% and Active Layer Thickness of 600 nm , 2019, Advanced Energy Materials.

[34]  B. Schwartz,et al.  Sequential Processing: A Rational Route for Bulk Heterojunction Formation via Polymer Swelling , 2018, World Scientific Handbook of Organic Optoelectronic Devices.

[35]  Xiao-Fang Jiang,et al.  Thick Film Polymer Solar Cells Based on Naphtho[1,2‐c:5,6‐c]bis[1,2,5]thiadiazole Conjugated Polymers with Efficiency over 11% , 2017 .

[36]  Joshua H. Carpenter,et al.  A regioregular conjugated polymer for high performance thick-film organic solar cells without processing additive , 2017 .

[37]  S. Tolbert,et al.  Extensive Penetration of Evaporated Electrode Metals into Fullerene Films: Intercalated Metal Nanostructures and Influence on Device Architecture. , 2015, ACS applied materials & interfaces.

[38]  S. Tolbert,et al.  Comparing matched polymer:Fullerene solar cells made by solution-sequential processing and traditional blend casting: Nanoscale structure and device performance , 2014 .

[39]  S. Tolbert,et al.  Crystallinity effects in sequentially processed and blend-cast bulk-heterojunction polymer/fullerene photovoltaics , 2014 .

[40]  Xiaotian Hu,et al.  Advances toward the Device Design and Printing Technology for Eco-friendly Organic Photovoltaics , 2023, Energy & Environmental Science.

[41]  Wenzhu Liu,et al.  Film-formation dynamics coordinated by intermediate state engineering enables efficient thickness-insensitive organic solar cells , 2023, Energy & Environmental Science.

[42]  Gang Li,et al.  Highly Efficient and Stable Binary All-polymer Solar Cells Enabled by Sequential Deposition Processing Tuned Microstructure , 2022, Journal of Materials Chemistry C.