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Refining acceptor aggregation in nonfullerene organic solar cells to achieve high efficiency and superior thermal stability

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Abstract

With the rapid increase in photoelectric conversion efficiency of organic photovoltaics (OPVs), prolonging the operational lifetime of devices becomes one of the critical prerequisites for commercial applications. Guided by the theoretical calculations of molecular stacking and miscibility, we proposed an effective approach to simultaneously improve device performance and thermal stability of high-efficiency OPVs by refining the aggregation of Y-series acceptors. The key to this approach is deliberately designing an asymmetric Y-series acceptor, named Y6-CNO, which acts as a third component regulator to finely tune the degree of acceptor aggregation and crystallization in the benchmark PM6:Y6-BO system. Strikingly, a champion photovoltaic efficiency of 18.0% was achieved by introducing 15 wt% Y6-CNO into the PM6:Y6-BO system, significantly higher than the control binary cell (16.7%). Moreover, annealing at 100 °C for over 1,200 h does not markedly affect the photovoltaic performance of the optimal ternary devices, maintaining above 95% of the initial performance and exhibiting an exceptionally high T80 lifetime of 9,000 h under continuous thermal annealing. By contrast, binary devices suffer from excessive crystallization of acceptors with long-term annealing. Additionally, mixing thermodynamics combined with morphological characterizations were employed to elucidate the microstructure-thermal stability relationships. The ternary OPVs consisting of symmetric and asymmetric homologous acceptors form better charge transport channels and can effectively suppress excessive aggregation of acceptors under long-term annealing. This work demonstrates the effectiveness of refining acceptor aggregation via molecular design for highly efficient and stable nonfullerene-based OPVs.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (52073207, 52121002) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities. L. Ye also appreciates the Peiyang Scholar Program of Tianjin University for support. Z. Fei and S. Zhang thank the Haihe Laboratory of Sustainable Chemical Transformations for financial support. GIWAXS data acquisition at the beamline BL16B1 of Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility (SSRF). Besides, the GIWAXS data were also checked at the beamline BL14B1 of SSRF and the beamline 1W1A of Beijing Synchrotron Radiation Facility (BSRF).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Materials Science & Engineering, Tianjin Key Laboratory of Molecular Optoelectronic Sciences, Tianjin University, and Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemical Science and Engineering, Tianjin, 300350, China

    Kaihu Xian, Junwei Liu, Kangkang Zhou, Zhongxiang Peng, Mingfei Li, Yanhou Geng & Long Ye

  2. Institute of Molecular Plus, Tianjin Key Laboratory of Molecular Optoelectronic Science, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, China

    Shengnan Zhang & Zhuping Fei

  3. Haihe Laboratory of Sustainable Chemical Transformations, Tianjin, 300192, China

    Shengnan Zhang & Zhuping Fei

  4. Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry, CAS Research/Education Center for Excellence in Molecular Sciences, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China

    Ye Xu & Jianhui Hou

  5. College of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing, 210037, China

    Wenchao Zhao

  6. Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Yu Chen

  7. Joint School of National University of Singapore and Tianjin University, International Campus of Tianjin University, Binhai New City, Fuzhou, 350207, China

    Yanhou Geng

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  1. Kaihu Xian
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  2. Shengnan Zhang
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  3. Ye Xu
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  13. Long Ye
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Correspondence to Zhuping Fei or Long Ye.

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Refining acceptor aggregation in nonfullerene organic solar cells to achieve high efficiency and superior thermal stability

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Xian, K., Zhang, S., Xu, Y. et al. Refining acceptor aggregation in nonfullerene organic solar cells to achieve high efficiency and superior thermal stability. Sci. China Chem. 66, 202–215 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11426-022-1394-y

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