Absence of Mixed Phase in Organic Photovoltaic Active Layers Facilitates Use of Green Solvent Processing

Oosterhout, Stefan D.; Savikhin, Victoria; Burgers, Mark A.; Zhang, Junxiang; Zhang, Yadong; Marder, Seth R.; Bazan, Guillermo C.; Toney, Michael F.

doi:10.1021/acs.jpcc.8b01600

Title: Absence of Mixed Phase in Organic Photovoltaic Active Layers Facilitates Use of Green Solvent Processing

Journal Article · Mon Apr 30 00:00:00 EDT 2018 · Journal of Physical Chemistry. C

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpcc.8b01600· OSTI ID:1461805

^[1]; Savikhin, Victoria ^[2]; Burgers, Mark A. ^[3]; Zhang, Junxiang ^[4]; Zhang, Yadong ^[4];

^[4];

^[3];

^[1]

SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States); Stanford Univ., CA (United States). Electrical Engineering Dept.
Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, CA (United States). Dept. of Materials and Chemistry & Biochemistry
Georgia Inst. of Technology, Atlanta, GA (United States). School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics

In this paper, we examine the morphology of a donor molecule:fullerene organic photovoltaic (OPV) active layer, processed from the “green solvent” 2-methyl-THF (m-THF), as well as the conformation of the two OPV constituent components in the casting solution. We observe that the small molecule (X2) has a weak association with itself in chloroform solvent, whereas it does not self-associate in m-THF. Despite this difference, the morphologies of the final processed films are extraordinarily similar: there is negligible molecularly mixed phase in the layer, and the domain sizes of the pure X2 and pure fullerene are 15–20 nm. We attribute this similarity between the final films to the strong aggregation behavior of X2 upon drying; changes in solvent or solvent additive have therefore only a minor effect on the final bulk heterojunction morphology. This contrasts with the majority of other OPV molecular donor semiconductor systems, which need careful tuning of solvent and/or solvent additive to achieve the optimal morphology and photovoltaic performance. Finally, we argue that the absence of a mixed phase is a result of the strong self-aggregation behavior of X2 and a key property of this material combination that makes it robust to a change in processing solvent.

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Research Organization:: SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States); Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES); Office of Naval Research (ONR) (United States); USDOD

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-76SF00515; N00014-14-1-0580; N00014-16-1-2520; N00014-16-1-2678

OSTI ID:: 1461805

Journal Information:: Journal of Physical Chemistry. C, Vol. 122, Issue 20; ISSN 1932-7447

Publisher:: American Chemical SocietyCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 8 works

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