Enhancing the Efficiency of Organic Photovoltaics by a Photoactive Molecular Mediator
Abstract
High boiling-point solvent additives, such as 1,8-diiodooctane, have been widely used to tune nanoscale phase morphology for increased efficiency in bulk heterojunction organic solar cells. However, liquid-state solvent additives remain in the active films for extended times and later migrate or evaporate from the films, leading to unstable device performance. Here, a solid-state photoactive molecular mediator, namely N(BAI)3, is reported that could be employed to replace the commonly used solvent additives to tune the morphology of bulk heterojunction films for improved device performance. The N(BAI)3 mediator not only resides in the active films locally to fine tune the phase morphology, but also contributes to the additional absorption of the active films, leading to ~11% enhancement of power conversion efficiency of P3HT:PC60BM devices. Comparative studies are carried out to probe the nanoscale morphologies using grazing incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering and complementary neutron reflectometry. The use of 1 wt% N(BAI)3 is found to effectively tune the packing of P3HT, presumably through balanced π-interactions endowed by its large conjugated π surface, and to promote the formation of a PC60BM-rich top interfacial layer. Finally, these findings open up a new way to effectively tailor the phase morphology by photoactive molecular mediators in organic photovoltaics.
- Authors:
-
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Hunan Univ. (China)
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1599777
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC02-05CH11231
- Resource Type:
- Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Name:
- Solar RRL
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Volume: 2; Journal Issue: 1; Journal ID: ISSN 2367-198X
- Publisher:
- Wiley
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 14 SOLAR ENERGY; conjugated molecular materials; morphology; organic optoelectronics; organic photovoltaics
Citation Formats
Yang, Bin, Kolaczkowski, Matthew A., Brady, Michael A., Keum, Jong K., Browning, James F., Chen, Teresa L., and Liu, Yi. Enhancing the Efficiency of Organic Photovoltaics by a Photoactive Molecular Mediator. United States: N. p., 2017.
Web. doi:10.1002/solr.201700208.
Yang, Bin, Kolaczkowski, Matthew A., Brady, Michael A., Keum, Jong K., Browning, James F., Chen, Teresa L., & Liu, Yi. Enhancing the Efficiency of Organic Photovoltaics by a Photoactive Molecular Mediator. United States. https://doi.org/10.1002/solr.201700208
Yang, Bin, Kolaczkowski, Matthew A., Brady, Michael A., Keum, Jong K., Browning, James F., Chen, Teresa L., and Liu, Yi. Wed .
"Enhancing the Efficiency of Organic Photovoltaics by a Photoactive Molecular Mediator". United States. https://doi.org/10.1002/solr.201700208. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1599777.
@article{osti_1599777,
title = {Enhancing the Efficiency of Organic Photovoltaics by a Photoactive Molecular Mediator},
author = {Yang, Bin and Kolaczkowski, Matthew A. and Brady, Michael A. and Keum, Jong K. and Browning, James F. and Chen, Teresa L. and Liu, Yi},
abstractNote = {High boiling-point solvent additives, such as 1,8-diiodooctane, have been widely used to tune nanoscale phase morphology for increased efficiency in bulk heterojunction organic solar cells. However, liquid-state solvent additives remain in the active films for extended times and later migrate or evaporate from the films, leading to unstable device performance. Here, a solid-state photoactive molecular mediator, namely N(BAI)3, is reported that could be employed to replace the commonly used solvent additives to tune the morphology of bulk heterojunction films for improved device performance. The N(BAI)3 mediator not only resides in the active films locally to fine tune the phase morphology, but also contributes to the additional absorption of the active films, leading to ~11% enhancement of power conversion efficiency of P3HT:PC60BM devices. Comparative studies are carried out to probe the nanoscale morphologies using grazing incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering and complementary neutron reflectometry. The use of 1 wt% N(BAI)3 is found to effectively tune the packing of P3HT, presumably through balanced π-interactions endowed by its large conjugated π surface, and to promote the formation of a PC60BM-rich top interfacial layer. Finally, these findings open up a new way to effectively tailor the phase morphology by photoactive molecular mediators in organic photovoltaics.},
doi = {10.1002/solr.201700208},
journal = {Solar RRL},
number = 1,
volume = 2,
place = {United States},
year = {Wed Dec 27 00:00:00 EST 2017},
month = {Wed Dec 27 00:00:00 EST 2017}
}
Free Publicly Available Full Text
Publisher's Version of Record
Other availability
Search WorldCat to find libraries that may hold this journal
Cited by: 8 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science
Web of Science
Save to My Library
You must Sign In or Create an Account in order to save documents to your library.
Works referenced in this record:
Tuning Aggregation of Poly(3-hexylthiophene) within Nanoparticles
journal, November 2012
- Nagarjuna, Gavvalapalli; Baghgar, Mina; Labastide, Joelle A.
- ACS Nano, Vol. 6, Issue 12
Solution-processed organic tandem solar cells with power conversion efficiencies >12%
journal, December 2016
- Li, Miaomiao; Gao, Ke; Wan, Xiangjian
- Nature Photonics, Vol. 11, Issue 2
Understanding How Processing Additives Tune the Nanoscale Morphology of High Efficiency Organic Photovoltaic Blends: From Casting Solution to Spun-Cast Thin Film
journal, August 2014
- Shao, Ming; Keum, Jong Kahk; Kumar, Rajeev
- Advanced Functional Materials, Vol. 24, Issue 42
Effects of Additives on the Morphology of Solution Phase Aggregates Formed by Active Layer Components of High-Efficiency Organic Solar Cells
journal, December 2011
- Lou, Sylvia J.; Szarko, Jodi M.; Xu, Tao
- Journal of the American Chemical Society, Vol. 133, Issue 51
Removal of Residual Diiodooctane Improves Photostability of High-Performance Organic Solar Cell Polymers
journal, January 2016
- Tremolet de Villers, Bertrand J.; O’Hara, Kathryn A.; Ostrowski, David P.
- Chemistry of Materials, Vol. 28, Issue 3
Morphological Degradation in Low Bandgap Polymer Solar Cells - An In Operando Study
journal, July 2016
- Schaffer, Christoph J.; Palumbiny, Claudia M.; Niedermeier, Martin A.
- Advanced Energy Materials, Vol. 6, Issue 19
Device Physics of PolymerFullerene Bulk Heterojunction Solar Cells
journal, June 2007
- Blom, P. W. M.; Mihailetchi, V. D.; Koster, L. J. A.
- Advanced Materials, Vol. 19, Issue 12, p. 1551-1566
Triarylamine: Versatile Platform for Organic, Dye-Sensitized, and Perovskite Solar Cells
journal, November 2016
- Wang, Jiayu; Liu, Kuan; Ma, Lanchao
- Chemical Reviews, Vol. 116, Issue 23
25th Anniversary Article: Rise to Power - OPV-Based Solar Parks
journal, October 2013
- Krebs, Frederik C.; Espinosa, Nieves; Hösel, Markus
- Advanced Materials, Vol. 26, Issue 1
Effects of morphology evolution on solution-processed small molecule photovoltaics via a solvent additive
journal, January 2017
- Hoang, Quoc Viet; Rasool, Shafket; Oh, Sora
- Journal of Materials Chemistry C, Vol. 5, Issue 31
Interplay between intrachain and interchain interactions in semiconducting polymer assemblies: The HJ-aggregate model
journal, May 2012
- Yamagata, H.; Spano, F. C.
- The Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol. 136, Issue 18
Effect of Solvent Additive on Generation, Recombination, and Extraction in PTB7:PCBM Solar Cells: A Conclusive Experimental and Numerical Simulation Study
journal, April 2015
- Kniepert, Juliane; Lange, Ilja; Heidbrink, Jan
- The Journal of Physical Chemistry C, Vol. 119, Issue 15
New Form of an Old Natural Dye: Bay-Annulated Indigo (BAI) as an Excellent Electron Accepting Unit for High Performance Organic Semiconductors
journal, October 2014
- He, Bo; Pun, Andrew B.; Zherebetskyy, Danylo
- Journal of the American Chemical Society, Vol. 136, Issue 42
Molecular Optimization Enables over 13% Efficiency in Organic Solar Cells
journal, May 2017
- Zhao, Wenchao; Li, Sunsun; Yao, Huifeng
- Journal of the American Chemical Society, Vol. 139, Issue 21
The use of an n-type macromolecular additive as a simple yet effective tool for improving and stabilizing the performance of organic solar cells
journal, January 2016
- Park, Kwang Hyun; An, Yujin; Jung, Seungon
- Energy & Environmental Science, Vol. 9, Issue 11
Tuning the Energy Level Offset between Donor and Acceptor with Ferroelectric Dipole Layers for Increased Efficiency in Bilayer Organic Photovoltaic Cells
journal, February 2012
- Yang, Bin; Yuan, Yongbo; Sharma, Pankaj
- Advanced Materials, Vol. 24, Issue 11
Solution-Processed Small Molecule-Polymer Blend Organic Thin-Film Transistors with Hole Mobility Greater than 5 cm2/Vs
journal, April 2012
- Smith, Jeremy; Zhang, Weimin; Sougrat, Rachid
- Advanced Materials, Vol. 24, Issue 18
25th Anniversary Article: Bulk Heterojunction Solar Cells: Understanding the Mechanism of Operation
journal, December 2013
- Heeger, Alan J.
- Advanced Materials, Vol. 26, Issue 1
Printable Solar Cells from Advanced Solution-Processible Materials
journal, August 2016
- Bae, Sang-Hoon; Zhao, Hongxiang; Hsieh, Yao-Tsung
- Chem, Vol. 1, Issue 2
Enhancing the Performance of Solution-Processed n-Type Organic Field-Effect Transistors by Blending with Molecular “Aligners”
journal, November 2013
- Zhang, Yue; Hanifi, David; Lim, Eunhee
- Advanced Materials, Vol. 26, Issue 8
Boosting the photovoltaic thermal stability of fullerene bulk heterojunction solar cells through charge transfer interactions
journal, January 2017
- Yi Ho, Carr Hoi; Cao, Huanyang; Lu, Yong
- Journal of Materials Chemistry A, Vol. 5, Issue 45
Solar Trees: First Large-Scale Demonstration of Fully Solution Coated, Semitransparent, Flexible Organic Photovoltaic Modules
journal, December 2015
- Berny, Stephane; Blouin, Nicolas; Distler, Andreas
- Advanced Science, Vol. 3, Issue 5
Effect of Processing Additives on the Solidification of Blade-Coated Polymer/Fullerene Blend Films via In-Situ Structure Measurements
journal, April 2013
- Shin, Nayool; Richter, Lee J.; Herzing, Andrew A.
- Advanced Energy Materials, Vol. 3, Issue 7
Rational tuning of high-energy visible light absorption for panchromatic small molecules by a two-dimensional conjugation approach
journal, January 2016
- He, Bo; Zherebetskyy, Danylo; Wang, Hongxia
- Chemical Science, Vol. 7, Issue 6
Photovoltaic performance enhancement of P3HT/PCBM solar cells driven by incorporation of conjugated liquid crystalline rod-coil block copolymers
journal, January 2014
- Yuan, Kai; Chen, Lie; Chen, Yiwang
- J. Mater. Chem. C, Vol. 2, Issue 19
Small molecule BODIPY dyes as non-fullerene acceptors in bulk heterojunction organic photovoltaics
journal, January 2014
- Poe, Ambata M.; Della Pelle, Andrea M.; Subrahmanyam, Ayyagari V.
- Chem. Commun., Vol. 50, Issue 22
Phase imaging atomic force microscopy in the characterization of biomaterials
journal, April 2010
- Ye, Z.; Zhao, X.
- Journal of Microscopy, Vol. 238, Issue 1
Zone-Refinement Effect in Small Molecule−Polymer Blend Semiconductors for Organic Thin-Film Transistors
journal, January 2011
- Chung, Yeon Sook; Shin, Nayool; Kang, Jihoon
- Journal of the American Chemical Society, Vol. 133, Issue 3
The isotopic effects of deuteration on optoelectronic properties of conducting polymers
journal, January 2014
- Shao, Ming; Keum, Jong; Chen, Jihua
- Nature Communications, Vol. 5, Issue 1
Conjugated Polymer-Based Organic Solar Cells
journal, April 2007
- Günes, Serap; Neugebauer, Helmut; Sariciftci, Niyazi Serdar
- Chemical Reviews, Vol. 107, Issue 4, p. 1324-1338
High-efficiency solution processable polymer photovoltaic cells by self-organization of polymer blends
journal, October 2005
- Li, Gang; Shrotriya, Vishal; Huang, Jinsong
- Nature Materials, Vol. 4, Issue 11, p. 864-868
Effects of Solubilizing Group Modification in Fullerene Bis-Adducts on Normal and Inverted Type Polymer Solar Cells
journal, June 2012
- Kim, Ki-Hyun; Kang, Hyunbum; Kim, Hyeong Jun
- Chemistry of Materials, Vol. 24, Issue 12
Morphological origin for the stratification of P3HT:PCBM blend film studied by neutron reflectometry
journal, November 2013
- Keum, Jong Kahk; Browning, James F.; Xiao, Kai
- Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 103, Issue 22
Fine-Tuned Photoactive and Interconnection Layers for Achieving over 13% Efficiency in a Fullerene-Free Tandem Organic Solar Cell
journal, May 2017
- Cui, Yong; Yao, Huifeng; Gao, Bowei
- Journal of the American Chemical Society, Vol. 139, Issue 21
Polydimethylsiloxane as a Macromolecular Additive for Enhanced Performance of Molecular Bulk Heterojunction Organic Solar Cells
journal, March 2011
- Graham, Kenneth R.; Mei, Jianguo; Stalder, Romain
- ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, Vol. 3, Issue 4
Recent progress in non-fullerene small molecule acceptors in organic solar cells (OSCs)
journal, January 2017
- Chen, Wangqiao; Zhang, Qichun
- Journal of Materials Chemistry C, Vol. 5, Issue 6
Light-Controlled Morphologies of Self-Assembled Triarylamine–Fullerene Conjugates
journal, February 2015
- Busseron, Eric; Cid, Juan-José; Wolf, Adrian
- ACS Nano, Vol. 9, Issue 3
Impact of Solvent Additive on Carrier Transport in Polymer:Fullerene Bulk Heterojunction Photovoltaic Cells
journal, July 2015
- Ho, Carr Hoi Yi; Dong, Qi; Yin, Hang
- Advanced Materials Interfaces, Vol. 2, Issue 12
Universal Formation of Compositionally Graded Bulk Heterojunction for Efficiency Enhancement in Organic Photovoltaics
journal, February 2014
- Xiao, Zhengguo; Yuan, Yongbo; Yang, Bin
- Advanced Materials, Vol. 26, Issue 19
The Role of Solvent Additive Processing in High Performance Small Molecule Solar Cells
journal, November 2014
- Perez, Louis A.; Rogers, James T.; Brady, Michael A.
- Chemistry of Materials, Vol. 26, Issue 22
Low Bandgap Conjugated Polymers Based on a Nature-Inspired Bay-Annulated Indigo (BAI) Acceptor as Stable Electrochromic Materials
journal, April 2016
- He, Bo; Neo, Wei Teng; Chen, Teresa L.
- ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, Vol. 4, Issue 5
Spray coated silver nanowires as transparent electrodes in OPVs for Building Integrated Photovoltaics applications
journal, December 2016
- Ding, Z.; Stoichkov, V.; Horie, M.
- Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells, Vol. 157
Stepwise Bay Annulation of Indigo for the Synthesis of Desymmetrized Electron Acceptors and Donor–Acceptor Constructs
journal, October 2016
- Kolaczkowski, Matthew A.; He, Bo; Liu, Yi
- Organic Letters, Vol. 18, Issue 20
Synthesis and applications of novel low bandgap star-burst molecules containing a triphenylamine core and dialkylated diketopyrrolopyrrole arms for organic photovoltaics
journal, January 2012
- Sahu, Duryodhan; Tsai, Chia-Hua; Wei, Hung-Yu
- Journal of Materials Chemistry, Vol. 22, Issue 16
Blending induced stack-ordering and performance improvement in a solution-processed n-type organic field-effect transistor
journal, January 2010
- Wei, Zhongming; Xi, Hongxia; Dong, Huanli
- J. Mater. Chem., Vol. 20, Issue 6
Works referencing / citing this record:
Electron‐Beam‐Related Studies of Halide Perovskites: Challenges and Opportunities
journal, February 2020
- Ran, Junhui; Dyck, Ondrej; Wang, Xiaozheng
- Advanced Energy Materials, Vol. 10, Issue 26
Functional Organic Semiconductors Based on Bay‐Annulated Indigo (BAI)
journal, January 2019
- Kolaczkowski, Matthew A.; Liu, Yi
- The Chemical Record, Vol. 19, Issue 6