Donor End-Capped Alkyl Chain Length Dependent Non-Radiative Energy Loss in All-Small-Molecule Organic Solar Cells

Zhang, Lili; Sun, Rui; Zhang, Ziqi; Zhang, Jianqi; Zhu, Qinglian; Ma, Wei; Min, Jie; Wei, Zhixiang; Deng, Dan

doi:10.1002/adma.202207020

Donor End-Capped Alkyl Chain Length Dependent Non-Radiative Energy Loss in All-Small-Molecule Organic Solar Cells

Journal Article · Thu Oct 20 00:00:00 EDT 2022 · Advanced Materials

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.202207020· OSTI ID:2422674

Zhang, Lili ^[1]; Sun, Rui ^[2]; Zhang, Ziqi ^[3]; Zhang, Jianqi ^[3]; Zhu, Qinglian ^[4]; Ma, Wei ^[4]; Min, Jie ^[2]; Wei, Zhixiang ^[3]; ^[3]

Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing (China); University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing (China)
Wuhan Univ. (China)
Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing (China)
Xi'an Jiaotong Univ. (China)

A critical bottleneck for further efficiency breakthroughs in organic solar cells (OSCs) is to minimize the non-radiative energy loss (eΔV_nr) while maximizing the charge generation. With the development of highly emissive low-bandgap non-fullerene acceptors, the design of high-performance donors becomes critical to enable the blend with the electroluminescence quantum efficiency to approach or surpass the pristine acceptor. Herein, by shortening the end-capped alkyl chains of the small-molecular donors from hexyl (MPhS-C6) to ethyl (MPhS-C2), the material obtained aggregation that was insensitive to thermal annealing (TA) along with condensed packing simultaneously. The former leads to small phase separation and suppressed upshifts of the highest occupied molecular orbital energy level during TA, and the latter facilitates its efficient charge-transport at aggregation-less packing. Hence, the ΔV_nr decreases from 0.242 to 0.182 V, from MPhS-C6 to MPhS-C2 based OSCs. An excellent PCE of 17.11% is obtained by 1,8-diiodoctane addition due to almost unchanged high J_sc (26.6 mA cm^–2) and V_oc (0.888 V) with improved fill factor, which is the record efficiency with the smallest energy loss (0.497 eV) and ΔV_nr (0.192 V) in all-small-molecule OSCs. Finally, these results emphasize the potential material design direction of obtaining concurrent TA-insensitive aggregation and condensed packing to maximize the device performances with a super low ΔV_nr.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Research Organization:: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). Advanced Light Source (ALS)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE; USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-05CH11231

OSTI ID:: 2422674

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1896940

Journal Information:: Advanced Materials, Journal Name: Advanced Materials Journal Issue: 50 Vol. 34; ISSN 0935-9648

Publisher:: WileyCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Donor End-Capped Alkyl Chain Length Dependent Non-Radiative Energy Loss in All-Small-Molecule Organic Solar Cells

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