Effect of vacuum treatment in diketopyrrolopyrrole (DPP) based copolymer with ratio controlled toluene- and benzene- functional groups for efficient organic photovoltaic cells: Morphological and electrical contribution

Abstract

Solution-processed organic bulk-heterojunction (BHJ) photovoltaic cells using random copolymeric donor materials have been extensively reported due to their suitable film-forming characteristics and phase-separated nano-morphology. Here, ratio-controlled toluene-versus benzene-chemical group based diketopyrrolopyrrole (DPP) donor polymers mixed with a fullerene acceptor were investigated to fabricate an efficient photovoltaic active layer with improved electrical properties through a vacuum treatment. The vacuum process leads to an increase in the phase-separation with a low surface roughness and nanoscale-distributed crystallinity due to securing the dry time of the residual solvent and solvent additive within the active layer. Moreover, the optimized DPP-based donor with toluene (T) versus benzene (B) linkers and electron transporting layer leads to an improvement in the power conversion efficiencies of up to 6.31% under AM 1.5G illumination due to the contributions of an efficient charge transfer and reduced series resistance. Therefore, the organic semiconductor obtained with the ratio-controlled molecular structure and proper solvent drying process plays an important role in increasing the electrical and morphological properties to produce efficient organic solar cells.