Abstract
All-polymer solar cells (all-PSCs) based on polymerized small molecular acceptors (PSMAs) have made significant progress recently. Here, we synthesize two A-DA’D-A small molecule acceptor based PSMAs of PS-Se with benzo[c][1,2,5]thiadiazole A’-core and PN-Se with benzotriazole A’-core, for the studies of the effect of molecular structure on the photovoltaic performance of the PSMAs. The two PSMAs possess broad absorption with PN-Se showing more red-shifted absorption than PS-Se and suitable electronic energy levels for the application as polymer acceptors in the all-PSCs with PBDB-T as polymer donor. Cryogenic transmission electron microscopy visualizes the aggregation behavior of the PBDB-T donor and the PSMA in their solutions. In addition, a bicontinuous-interpenetrating network in the PBDB-T:PN-Se blend film with aggregation size of 10~20 nm is clearly observed by the photoinduced force microscopy. The desirable morphology of the PBDB-T:PN-Se active layer leads its all-PSC showing higher power conversion efficiency of 16.16%.
Highlights
All-polymer solar cells based on polymerized small molecular acceptors (PSMAs) have made significant progress recently
All-polymer solar cells, based on the bulk heterojunction (BHJ) active layers composed of a p-type conjugated polymer donor and an n-type conjugated polymer acceptor, have attracted growing attentions due to their advantages of good mechanical properties, photostability, and thermal stability compared with small molecule acceptor (SMA)based organic solar cells[1,2,3,4,5]
Benefitted from the concept of polymerized small molecule acceptors (PSMAs)[6,7], the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of the all-PSCs based on PSMA increases rapidly[8,9,10], which has reached the threshold for commercialization and some specific applications like wearable and flexible devices[11,12]
Summary
All-polymer solar cells (all-PSCs) based on polymerized small molecular acceptors (PSMAs) have made significant progress recently. In the development of polymer acceptors, an important breakthrough is the design strategy of PSMAs proposed by our group in 20176, which is composed of a narrow bandgap SMA as main building block polymerized with a π-bridge linking unit. The selection of the small molecule acceptor building blocks plays a significant role in the photovoltaic properties of the PSMAs. a well-formed morphology of the all-polymer active layer with bicontinuous-interpenetrating network of polymer donor/polymer acceptor is essential to efficient exciton dissociation and charge carrier transport. Since intensive researches have revealed the interplay between the molecular structures and the blend film morphologies of the polymer donor and SMAs25,26, the proper selection of SMA building blocks is critical in the design of PSMAs for modulating its electronic properties and adjusting its aggregation morphology. PSMAs with suitable aggregation and good solubility should be developed for realizing high-performance all-
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