Issue 17, 2019

An extraordinary cyclohexylmethyl side chain dominating polymeric donor packing patterns and energy levels for efficient non-fullerene polymer solar cells

Abstract

Benefiting from the tremendous efforts devoted to small molecule electron acceptors (SMAs), great progress has been made in non-fullerene polymer solar cells (NF-PSCs). Yet compared with the structurally diverse SMAs, much less attention has been paid to polymeric donors, which are also extremely important components dominating the development of NF-PSCs. A material design concept for obtaining an easily achieved phase separated morphology between the polymeric donor and SMA is presented. The key concept lies in optimizing the polymer crystallinity, by inserting a newly developed cyclohexylmethyl side chain, thus improving the polymer:SMA miscibility, and simultaneously, decreasing the energy levels, and strengthening the overall packing of the polymers in their film states. Once the cyclohexylmethyl chains are introduced, PTAZ–CH and PTAZ–CH–S exhibit a higher absorption coefficient and deeper highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) energy levels, in comparison with the reference polymer. This methodology of using a cyclic side chain to control the polymer's crystallinity has the added benefits of forming optimal polymer:SMA morphologies without any post-treatments like thermal- or solvent-annealing, making such low energy consuming and environmentally friendly PSC fabrication available. Impressively, more than doubled power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) are obtained employing ordinary ITIC and IT-M as the electron accepting partners.

Graphical abstract: An extraordinary cyclohexylmethyl side chain dominating polymeric donor packing patterns and energy levels for efficient non-fullerene polymer solar cells

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
04 Mar 2019
Accepted
23 Mar 2019
First published
25 Mar 2019

J. Mater. Chem. A, 2019,7, 10505-10513

An extraordinary cyclohexylmethyl side chain dominating polymeric donor packing patterns and energy levels for efficient non-fullerene polymer solar cells

L. Han, N. Uranbileg, S. Jiang, Y. Xie, H. Jiang, Z. Lan, D. Yu, X. Bao and R. Yang, J. Mater. Chem. A, 2019, 7, 10505 DOI: 10.1039/C9TA02384D

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