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Title: Morphology control enables thickness-insensitive efficient nonfullerene polymer solar cells

Abstract

Owing to the use of cost-effective materials and excellent stability, nonfullerene polymer solar cells (PSCs) have great potential for realizing large-area industrial production. In contrast to fullerene-based devices, non-fullerene PSCs have exhibited a superior photovoltaic performance with up to 12% efficiency and long-term thermal stability. Presently, one of the major factors hindering industrial production is the high sensitivity of the power conversion efficiency (PCE) to thickness variations, which can significantly affect the manufacturing yields and production costs of roll-to-roll processing. Specifically, the device fill factors and PCEs of many high-efficiency nonfullerene PSCs show a significant loss when the thickness of the active layer is over 100 nm. In order to achieve high output capabilities earlier, there is an urgent need to find a processing method to fabricate high-efficiency thick-film nonfullerene PSCs. Controlling the morphology and performance sensitivity in thick-film non-fullerene devices is a great challenge in the field. In this paper, we present a simple morphology optimization method via thermal annealing to fabricate highly efficient thickness-insensitive non-fullerene PSCs. After this treatment, PBDB-T/IT-M-based nonfullerene PSCs can afford an impressive PCE of up to ~9.4% at an active layer thickness of 250 nm. In addition, the devices with an active layer thicknessmore » of 400 nm still maintain a high efficiency close to 9%. The photovoltaic properties and morphology parameters resolved from hard and soft X-ray scattering clearly indicate that thermal annealing plays a key role in improving the film thickness insensitivity for non-fullerene PSCs.« less

Authors:
 [1]; ORCiD logo [2];  [3];  [4];  [3];  [5];  [6];  [2]; ORCiD logo [3]
  1. Univ. of Science and Technology, Beijing (China). School of Chemistry and Biology Engineering; Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing (China). Inst. of Chemistry
  2. North Carolina State Univ., Raleigh, NC (United States). Dept. of Physics
  3. Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing (China). Inst. of Chemistry
  4. Univ. of Science and Technology, Beijing (China). School of Chemistry and Biology Engineering
  5. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). Advanced Light Source (ALS)
  6. Advanced Light Source;Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory;Berkeley;USA
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES); Ministry of Science and Technology of China; National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC); Chinese Academy of Sciences; US Department of the Navy, Office of Naval Research (ONR)
OSTI Identifier:
1633221
Grant/Contract Number:  
AC02-05CH11231; 2014CB643501; 21325419; 91333204; 21604017; 51373181; XDB12030200; KJZD-EW-J01; N00141512322
Resource Type:
Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
Materials Chemistry Frontiers
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Volume: 1; Journal Issue: 10; Journal ID: ISSN 2052-1537
Publisher:
Royal Society of Chemistry
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
14 SOLAR ENERGY

Citation Formats

Liu, Xiaoyu, Ye, Long, Zhao, Wenchao, Zhang, Shaoqing, Li, Sunsun, Su, Gregory M., Wang, Cheng, Ade, Harald, and Hou, Jianhui. Morphology control enables thickness-insensitive efficient nonfullerene polymer solar cells. United States: N. p., 2017. Web. doi:10.1039/c7qm00182g.
Liu, Xiaoyu, Ye, Long, Zhao, Wenchao, Zhang, Shaoqing, Li, Sunsun, Su, Gregory M., Wang, Cheng, Ade, Harald, & Hou, Jianhui. Morphology control enables thickness-insensitive efficient nonfullerene polymer solar cells. United States. https://doi.org/10.1039/c7qm00182g
Liu, Xiaoyu, Ye, Long, Zhao, Wenchao, Zhang, Shaoqing, Li, Sunsun, Su, Gregory M., Wang, Cheng, Ade, Harald, and Hou, Jianhui. Thu . "Morphology control enables thickness-insensitive efficient nonfullerene polymer solar cells". United States. https://doi.org/10.1039/c7qm00182g. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1633221.
@article{osti_1633221,
title = {Morphology control enables thickness-insensitive efficient nonfullerene polymer solar cells},
author = {Liu, Xiaoyu and Ye, Long and Zhao, Wenchao and Zhang, Shaoqing and Li, Sunsun and Su, Gregory M. and Wang, Cheng and Ade, Harald and Hou, Jianhui},
abstractNote = {Owing to the use of cost-effective materials and excellent stability, nonfullerene polymer solar cells (PSCs) have great potential for realizing large-area industrial production. In contrast to fullerene-based devices, non-fullerene PSCs have exhibited a superior photovoltaic performance with up to 12% efficiency and long-term thermal stability. Presently, one of the major factors hindering industrial production is the high sensitivity of the power conversion efficiency (PCE) to thickness variations, which can significantly affect the manufacturing yields and production costs of roll-to-roll processing. Specifically, the device fill factors and PCEs of many high-efficiency nonfullerene PSCs show a significant loss when the thickness of the active layer is over 100 nm. In order to achieve high output capabilities earlier, there is an urgent need to find a processing method to fabricate high-efficiency thick-film nonfullerene PSCs. Controlling the morphology and performance sensitivity in thick-film non-fullerene devices is a great challenge in the field. In this paper, we present a simple morphology optimization method via thermal annealing to fabricate highly efficient thickness-insensitive non-fullerene PSCs. After this treatment, PBDB-T/IT-M-based nonfullerene PSCs can afford an impressive PCE of up to ~9.4% at an active layer thickness of 250 nm. In addition, the devices with an active layer thickness of 400 nm still maintain a high efficiency close to 9%. The photovoltaic properties and morphology parameters resolved from hard and soft X-ray scattering clearly indicate that thermal annealing plays a key role in improving the film thickness insensitivity for non-fullerene PSCs.},
doi = {10.1039/c7qm00182g},
journal = {Materials Chemistry Frontiers},
number = 10,
volume = 1,
place = {United States},
year = {Thu Jun 22 00:00:00 EDT 2017},
month = {Thu Jun 22 00:00:00 EDT 2017}
}

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