Balancing the Selective Absorption and Photon-to-Electron Conversion for Semitransparent Organic Photovoltaics with 5.0% Light-Utilization Efficiency.

Abstract

Efficiently converting invisible light while allowing full visible light transmission is key to achieving high-performance semitransparent organic photovoltaics (ST-OPVs). Here, a detailed balance strategy is explored to optimize the ST-OPV via taking both absorption and carrier dynamics into consideration. Based on this principle, comprehensive optimizations are carried out, including a ternary strategy, donor:acceptor blend ratio, thickness, antireflection, etc., to compromise the invisible energy conversion and visible transmission for high-performance ST-OPVs. As a result, the opaque OPV device exhibits a champion power conversion efficiency of 19.35% (certificated 19.07%), and most strikingly, the best ST-OPV shows a remarkably high light-utilization efficiency of 5.0%, where the efficiency and the average visible transmission are 12.95% and 38.67%, respectively. An efficiency of 12.09% is achieved on the upscaled device with an area of 1.05 cm2 , demonstrating its promise for large-area fabrication. These results are among the best values for ST-OPVs. Besides, it is demonstrated that the ST-OPV exhibits good infrared light-reflection capability for thermal control. This work provides a rational design of balancing the absorbing selectivity and photon-to-electron conversion for high-performance ST-OPVs, and may pave the way toward the practical application of solar windows.