Nonfullerene Small Molecular Acceptor Acting as a Solid Additive Enables Highly Efficient Pseudo-Bilayer All-Polymer Solar Cells

Abstract

In this work, pseudo-bilayer planar heterojunction (PPHJ) all-polymer solar cells (APSCs) were constructed on the basis of the commonly used PY-IT and PM6 as the acceptor and donor, respectively. A nonfullerene small molecular acceptor (NF-SMA) BTP-eC9 was incorporated into the PY-IT layer as the solid additive in consideration of its similar building block to PY-IT. BTP-eC9 can serve as a photon capture reinforcer and morphology-regulating agent to realize more adequate photon capture, as well as a more orderly molecular arrangement for effective carrier transport. By incorporating 2 wt% BTP-eC9, the efficiency of PM6/PY-IT-based PPHJ-APSCs was boosted from 15.11% to 16.47%, accompanied by a synergistically enhanced short circuit current density (JSC, 23.36 vs. 24.08 mA cm−2) and fill factor (FF, 68.83% vs. 72.76%). In another all-polymer system, based on PBQx-TCl/PY-DT as the active layers, the efficiency could be boosted from 17.51% to 18.07%, enabled by the addition of 2 wt% L8-BO, which further verified the effectiveness of using an NF-SMA as a solid additive. This work demonstrates that incorporating an NF-SMA as a solid additive holds great potential for driving the development of PPHJ-APSCs.

Keywords

• organic photovoltaics
• all-polymer solar cells
• pseudo-bilayer planar heterojunction
• solid additive
• photoelectric process