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Title: Identifying and Amplifying the Spontaneously Formed Photo‐Charge Contribution in Opaque and Semitransparent Organic Photovoltaics

Journal Article · · Advanced Energy Materials
 [1];  [1];  [2];  [1];  [1]; ORCiD logo [1]
  1. State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering Xi'an Jiaotong University Xi'an 710049 P. R. China
  2. Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology (IFM) Linköping University Linköping 58183 Sweden

Abstract Spontaneous photo‐charge (SP) generation within the non‐fullerene (NFA) bulk helps avoid exciton (EX) related loss as compared to the traditional heterojunction route in organic solar cells (OSCs). Unfortunately, the promising SP utilization attracts little attention at this time due to the lack of knowledge on its specific contribution to the photovoltaic performance and rational optimization in high‐efficiency devices. To fill the gap, the NFAs’ SP characteristics are related with their photocurrent loss and power conversion efficiency (PCE) in state‐of‐the‐art materials. Though higher SP population is good for efficient EX utilization, it simultaneously acts as an additional photo‐charge recombination channel. The former can be further enhanced by increasing the NFAs’ crystallinity with preferred lamellar growth, and the latter can be suppressed via electric doping. With the aid of the two‐step optimization strategy, the total photocurrent loss is reduced from 14.4% to 4.8%, accompanying with PCE increment from 16.9% to 18.5%. The SP utilization strategy is finally applied in the semitransparent OSCs (ST‐OSCs), due to its less heterojunction area sensitive photo‐charge generation characteristic. A light utilization efficiency (LUE) is then increased from 3.21% to 3.77%. The findings highlight the pursue of efficient SP utilization as a new design philosophy in future OSCs’ progresses.

Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
2310432
Journal Information:
Advanced Energy Materials, Journal Name: Advanced Energy Materials; ISSN 1614-6832
Publisher:
Wiley Blackwell (John Wiley & Sons)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
Germany
Language:
English

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