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Title: 19.31% binary organic solar cell and low non-radiative recombination enabled by non-monotonic intermediate state transition

Journal Article · · Nature Communications
ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [1];  [2]; ORCiD logo [3]; ORCiD logo [2];  [4];  [5]; ORCiD logo [6]; ORCiD logo [6]; ORCiD logo [3]; ORCiD logo [1]
  1. Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong and Shenzhen (China). Shenzhen Research Institute
  2. Chinese University of Hong Kong (China)
  3. Univ. of California, Los Angeles, CA (United States)
  4. Taizhou University (China)
  5. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran (Saudi Arabia)
  6. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). Molecular Foundry

Non-fullerene acceptors based organic solar cells represent the frontier of the field, owing to both the materials and morphology manipulation innovations. Non-radiative recombination loss suppression and performance boosting are in the center of organic solar cell research. Here, we developed a non-monotonic intermediate state manipulation strategy for state-of-the-art organic solar cells by employing 1,3,5-trichlorobenzene as crystallization regulator, which optimizes the film crystallization process, regulates the self-organization of bulk-heterojunction in a non-monotonic manner, i.e., first enhancing and then relaxing the molecular aggregation. As a result, the excessive aggregation of non-fullerene acceptors is avoided and we have achieved efficient organic solar cells with reduced non-radiative recombination loss. In PM6:BTP-eC9 organic solar cell, our strategy successfully offers a record binary organic solar cell efficiency of 19.31% (18.93% certified) with very low non-radiative recombination loss of 0.190 eV. And lower non-radiative recombination loss of 0.168 eV is further achieved in PM1:BTP-eC9 organic solar cell (19.10% efficiency), giving great promise to future organic solar cell research.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). Molecular Foundry; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). Advanced Light Source (ALS)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES). Materials Sciences & Engineering Division (MSE); Research Grants Council of Hong Kong; National Science Foundation of China (NSFC)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231; GRF 15211320; CRF C5037-18G; NSFC 51961165102; GDSTC 2019B121205001
OSTI ID:
1972948
Journal Information:
Nature Communications, Vol. 14, Issue 1; ISSN 2041-1723
Publisher:
Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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