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Non-fullerene acceptor fibrils enable efficient ternary organic solar cells with 16.6% efficiency

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Abstract

Optimizing the components and morphology within the photoactive layer of organic solar cells (OSCs) can significantly enhance their power conversion efficiency (PCE). A new A-D-A type non-fullerene acceptor IDMIC-4F is designed and synthesized in this work, and is employed as the third component to prepare high performance ternary solar cells. IDMIC-4F can form fibrils after solution casting, and the presence of this fibrillar structure in the PBDB-T-2F:BTP-4F host confines the growth of donors and acceptors into fine domains, as well as acting as transport channels to enhance electron mobility. Single junction ternary devices incorporating 10 wt% IDMIC-4F exhibit enhanced light absorption and balanced carrier mobility, and achieve a maximum PCE of 16.6% compared to 15.7% for the binary device, which is a remarkable efficiency for OSCs reported in literature. This non-fullerene acceptor fibril network strategy is a promising method to improve the photovoltaic performance of ternary OSCs.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Hubei Province of China (2018CFA055), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21774097) and the 111 project (B18038). All authors thank the beamline BL16B1 at Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility (China) for providing the beam time and help during GISAXS experiment. We also thank the Diamond Light Source (UK) beamline I07 where GIWAXS measurements were performed (via beamtime allocation SI22651-1). We also thank the U.K. EPSRC for funding studentships for R. C.K. (DTG allocation), M.E.O’K. (EP/L016281/1: CDT in Polymers, Soft Matter and Colloids) and J.A.S. (EP/L01551X/1: CDT in New and Sustainable PV).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, 430070, China

    Donghui Li, Xiaolong Chen, Jinglong Cai, Wei Li, Mengxue Chen, Yuchao Mao, Baocai Du, Xue Zhang, Yuan Zhuang, Pang Wang, Hui Wang, Dan Liu & Tao Wang

  2. State Key Laboratory of Silicate Materials for Architectures, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, 430070, China

    Donghui Li, Xiaolong Chen, Jinglong Cai, Wei Li, Mengxue Chen, Yuchao Mao, Baocai Du, Xue Zhang, Yuan Zhuang, Pang Wang, Hui Wang, Dan Liu & Tao Wang

  3. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, S3 7RH, UK

    Joel A. Smith, Rachel C. Kilbride, Mary E. O’Kane, Richard A. L. Jones & David G. Lidzey

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  1. Donghui Li
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Correspondence to Tao Wang.

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Li, D., Chen, X., Cai, J. et al. Non-fullerene acceptor fibrils enable efficient ternary organic solar cells with 16.6% efficiency. Sci. China Chem. 63, 1461–1468 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11426-019-9681-8

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