Abstract
In the last few decades, organic solar cells (OSCs) have drawn broad interest owing to their advantages such as being low cost, flexible, semitransparent, non-toxic, and ideal for roll-to-roll large-scale processing. Significant advances have been made in the field of OSCs containing high-performance active layer materials, electrodes, and interlayers, as well as novel device structures. Particularly, the innovation of active layer materials, including novel acceptors and donors, has contributed significantly to the power conversion efficiency (PCE) improvement in OSCs. In this review, high-performance acceptors, containing fullerene derivatives, small molecular, and polymeric non-fullerene acceptors (NFAs), are discussed in detail. Meanwhile, highly efficient donor materials designed for fullerene- and NFA-based OSCs are also presented. Additionally, motivated by the incessant developments of donor and acceptor materials, recent advances in the field of ternary and tandem OSCs are reviewed as well.
Highlights
Since the first silicon solar cell was invented by Bell Telephone laboratories in 1954 [1], solar cells have demonstrated great potential in utilizing renewable solar energy
Acceptors that contain fullerene derivatives and small molecular and polymeric non-fullerene acceptors (NFAs) were discussed in detail
Owing to their excellent performance, the research on novel small molecular NFAs has become a hot topic in the field of organic solar cells (OSCs), with the efficiency record refreshing frequently
Summary
Since the first silicon solar cell was invented by Bell Telephone laboratories in 1954 [1], solar cells have demonstrated great potential in utilizing renewable solar energy. The first generation of OSCs was born with a single active layer, which was sandwiched between two electrodes with different work functions (Figure 1a). The single layer devices showed poor PCE below 0.1% for the reason of difficulty in achieving efficient dissociation of excitons (electron-hole pairs) and severe recombination of electrons and holes [3]. In 1986, a bilayer heterojunction structure (Figure 1b), containing copper phthalocyanine as donor (D) and perylene tetracarboxylic derivate as acceptor (A), was introduced by Tang [4], which was regarded as a big forward step in the field of OSCs. In 1986, a bilayer heterojunction structure (Figure 1b), containing copper phthalocyanine as donor (D) and perylene tetracarboxylic derivate as acceptor (A), was introduced by Tang [4], which was regarded as a big forward step in the field of OSCs In this bilayer heterojunction device, copper phthalocyanine and perylene tetracarboxylic derivate stacked together as active layers, yielding a PCE of ~1%. The limited D/A interface area still worked against the efficient exciton diffusion andD/A separation, notworked yielding a high.
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