Advanced Materials
Advanced Materials
5 years ago

Side Chain Engineering on Medium Bandgap Copolymers to Suppress Triplet Formation for High-Efficiency Polymer Solar Cells

Side Chain Engineering on Medium Bandgap Copolymers to Suppress Triplet Formation for High-Efficiency Polymer Solar Cells
Chunfeng Zhang, Lingwei Xue, Liang Gao, Xiaojun Li, Yongfang Li, Min Xiao, Xiaofeng Chen, Haijun Bin, Yankang Yang, Jia Yao, Beibei Qiu, Zhi-Guo Zhang, Chenkai Sun, Yunxu Yang, Jianqiu Xu
Suppression of carrier recombination is critically important in realizing high-efficiency polymer solar cells. Herein, it is demonstrated difluoro-substitution of thiophene conjugated side chain on donor polymer can suppress triplet formation for reducing carrier recombination. A new medium bandgap 2D-conjugated D–A copolymer J91 is designed and synthesized with bi(alkyl-difluorothienyl)-benzodithiophene as donor unit and fluorobenzotriazole as acceptor unit, for taking the advantages of the synergistic fluorination on the backbone and thiophene side chain. J91 demonstrates enhanced absorption, low-lying highest occupied molecular orbital energy level, and higher hole mobility, in comparison with its control polymer J52 without fluorination on the thiophene side chains. The transient absorption spectra indicate that J91 can suppress the triplet formation in its blend film with n-type organic semiconductor acceptor m-ITIC (3,9-bis(2-methylene-(3-(1,1-dicyanomethylene)-indanone)-5,5,11,11-tetrakis(3-hexylphenyl)-dithieno[2,3-d:2,3′-d′]-s-indaceno[1,2-b:5,6-b′]-dithiophene). With these favorable properties, a higher power conversion efficiency of 11.63% with high VOC of 0.984 V and high JSC of 18.03 mA cm−2 is obtained for the polymer solar cells based on J91/m-ITIC with thermal annealing. The improved photovoltaic performance by thermal annealing is explained from the morphology change upon thermal annealing as revealed by photoinduced force microscopy. The results indicate that side chain engineering can provide a new solution to suppress carrier recombination toward high efficiency, thus deserves further attention. Suppression of carrier recombination is critically important for efficient polymer solar cells. Herein, it is demonstrated that difluoro-substitution of thiophene conjugated side chains on the medium bandgap polymer donor can suppress triplet formation for reducing carrier recombination and improving photovoltaic performance.

Publisher URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi

DOI: 10.1002/adma.201703344

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