A 2.20 eV Bandgap Polymer Donor for Efficient Colorful Semitransparent Organic Solar Cells

Abstract

AbstractSemitransparent organic solar cells (ST‐OSCs) have attracted increasing attention due to their promising prospect in building‐integrated photovoltaics. Generally, efficient ST‐OSCs with good average visible transmittance (AVT) can be realized by developing active layer materials with light absorption far from the visible light range. Herein, the development of ultrawide bandgap polymer donors with near‐ultraviolet absorption, paired with near‐infrared acceptors, is proposed to achieve high‐performance ST‐OSCs. The key points for the design of ultrawide bandgap polymers include constructing donor–donor type conjugated skeleton, suppressing the quinoidal resonance effect, and minimizing the twist of conjugated skeleton via noncovalent conformational locks. As a proof of concept, a polymer named PBOF with an optical bandgap of 2.20 eV is synthesized, which exhibited largely reduced overlap with the human eye photopic response spectrum and afforded a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 16.40% in opaque device. As a result, ST‐OSCs with a PCE over 10% and an AVT over 30% are achieved without optical modulation. Moreover, colorful ST‐OSCs with visual aesthetics can be achieved by tuning the donor/acceptor weight ratio in active layer benefiting from the ultrawide bandgap nature of PBOF. This study demonstrates the great potential of ultrawide bandgap polymers for efficient colorful ST‐OSCs.