A donor polymer based on 3-cyanothiophene with superior batch-to-batch reproducibility for high-efficiency organic solar cells

Xiyue Yuan; Yunli Zhao; Tao Zhan; Jiyeon Oh; Jiadong Zhou; Junyu Li; Xiaojing Wang; Zhiqiang Wang; Shuting Pang; Ping Cai; Changduk Yang; Zhicai He; Zengqi Xie; Chunhui Duan; Fei Huang; Yong Cao

doi:10.1039/D1EE01957K

A donor polymer based on 3-cyanothiophene with superior batch-to-batch reproducibility for high-efficiency organic solar cells†

Xiyue Yuan,‡^a Yunli Zhao,‡^a Tao Zhan,‡^ab Jiyeon Oh,^c Jiadong Zhou,^a Junyu Li,^d Xiaojing Wang,^a Zhiqiang Wang,^a Shuting Pang,^a Ping Cai,

^b Changduk Yang,

^c Zhicai He,

^a Zengqi Xie,

^a Chunhui Duan,

*^a Fei Huang

^a and Yong Cao^a

Author affiliations

* Corresponding authors

^a Institute of Polymer Optoelectronic Materials and Devices, State Key Laboratory of Luminescent Materials and Devices, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, P. R. China
E-mail: duanchunhui@scut.edu.cn

^b School of Materials Science and Engineering & Guangxi Key Laboratory of Information Materials, Guilin University of Electronic Technology, Guilin 541004, P. R. China

^c Department of Energy Engineering, School of Energy and Chemical Engineering, Low Dimensional Carbon Materials Center, Perovtronics Research Center, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), Ulsan 44919, South Korea

^d Molecular Materials and Nanosystems & Institute for Complex Molecular Systems, Eindhoven University of Technology, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands

Abstract

The realization of high-efficiency organic solar cells (OSCs) relies largely on donor polymers. However, high-performance donor polymers are limited to a handful of building blocks, which usually suffer from lengthy synthesis and high production cost. Moreover, most donor polymers exhibited strong batch-to-batch variation. Herein, we report a new building block, 3-cyanothiophene (CT), which features a very simple asymmetric structure and facile synthesis. The donor polymer (PBCT-2F) based on the CT unit realized a remarkable power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 17.1%. More importantly, PBCT-2F exhibited excellent batch-to-batch reproducibility. The six polymer batches with molecular weights ranging from 18 to 74 kDa produced very similar PCEs: 15.9–17.1% and 12.7–13.2% when the polymer was blended with Y6 and IT-4F, respectively. These results suggest the great potential of PBCT-2F for industrial synthesis and large-scale manufacturing of OSC modules. This work also demonstrates the bright future of CT units for constructing high-performance donor polymers.

Energy & Environmental Science

A donor polymer based on 3-cyanothiophene with superior batch-to-batch reproducibility for high-efficiency organic solar cells†

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A donor polymer based on 3-cyanothiophene with superior batch-to-batch reproducibility for high-efficiency organic solar cells

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