Manipulating active layer morphology of molecular donor/polymer acceptor based organic solar cells through ternary blends

Abstract

The development of molecular donor/polymer acceptor blend (MD/PA)-type organic solar cells (OSCs) lags far behind other type OSCs. It is due to the large-size phase separation morphology of MD/PA blend, which results from the high crystallinity of molecular donors. In this article, to suppress the crystallinity of molecular donors, we use ternary blends to develop OSCs based on one polymer acceptor (P-BNBP-fBT) and two molecular donors (DR3TBDTT and BTR) with similar chemical structures. The ternary OSC exhibits a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 4.85%, which is higher than those of the binary OSCs (PCE=3.60% or 3.86%). To our best knowledge, it is the first report of ternary MD/PA-type OSCs and this PCE is among the highest for MD/PA-type OSCs reported so far. Compared with the binary blends, the ternary blend exhibits decreased crystalline size and improved face-on orientation of the donors. As a result, the ternary blend exhibits improved and balanced charge mobilities, suppressed charge recombination and increased donor/acceptor interfacial areas, which leads to the higher short-circuit current density. These results suggest that using ternary blend is an effective strategy to manipulate active layer morphology and enhance photovoltaic performance of MD/PA-type OSCs.