Controlling Polymer Morphology in Blade-Coated All-Polymer Solar Cells

Schneider, Sebastian A.; Gu, Kevin L.; Yan, Hongping; Abdelsamie, Maged; Bao, Zhenan; Toney, Michael F.

doi:10.1021/acs.chemmater.1c01050

Controlling Polymer Morphology in Blade-Coated All-Polymer Solar Cells

Journal Article · Fri Jul 30 00:00:00 EDT 2021 · Chemistry of Materials

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.chemmater.1c01050· OSTI ID:1845106

Schneider, Sebastian A. ^[1]; Gu, Kevin L. ^[2]; ^[1]; Abdelsamie, Maged ^[3]; ^[2]; ^[4]

Stanford Univ., CA (United States); SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
Stanford Univ., CA (United States)
SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States)

In this report translating all-polymer solar cells from spin-coating to scalable roll-to-roll-compatible fabrication techniques is a critical step toward the application of organic photovoltaics at a scale. Techniques to control polymer crystallization and phase separation during solution printing are essential to obtain high-performance printed organic solar cells. Here, we demonstrate a novel solvent additive approach employing trace amounts of phthalates as additives to control polymer crystallinity and suppress unfavorable phase separation in a representative PTB7-Th/P(NDI2OD-2T) all-polymer solar cell. The best-performing additive increased the blade-coated device performance from 2.09 to 4.50% power conversion efficiency, an over twofold improvement, mitigating the loss in performance that is typically observed during process transfer from spin-coating to blade-coating. It is suggested that the improved device performance stems from a finer polymer phase-separation size and overall improved active layer morphology, evidenced by device characterization data and indirectly supported by grazing incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering analyses. Real-time X-ray diffraction measurements during blade-coating provide mechanistic insights and suggest that the dioctyl phthalate additive may act as a compatibilizer, reducing the demixing of the donor and acceptor polymer during film formation, enabling a smaller phase separation and improved performance. The structural diversity of the class of phthalate additives makes this simple yet effective concept promising for translating other all-polymer material systems to blade-coating and other scalable printing techniques.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Research Organization:: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), Menlo Park, CA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: National Science Foundation (NSF); Office of Naval Research (ONR); USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-05CH11231; AC02-76SF00515

OSTI ID:: 1845106

Journal Information:: Chemistry of Materials, Journal Name: Chemistry of Materials Journal Issue: 15 Vol. 33; ISSN 0897-4756

Publisher:: American Chemical Society (ACS)Copyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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