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Nano Research 2022, 15(4): 3222-3229 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-021-3945-3
Research Article | Issue | Published: 04 December 2021

Exploring ternary organic photovoltaics for the reduced nonradiative recombination and improved efficiency over 17.23% with a simple large-bandgap small molecular third component

Show Author's Information Huanran Feng1( ),  Yvjie Dai1,  Lihao Guo1,  Di Wang2,  Hao Dong2,  Zhihui Liu1,  Lu Zhang1,  Yvjin Zhu1,  Chen Su1,  Yongsheng Chen3,  Weiwei Wu1( )
School of Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, Interdisciplinary Research Center of Smart Sensors, Xidian University, Shaanxi 710126, China
Intelligent Perception Research Institute, Zhejiang Lab, Hangzhou 311100, China
State Key Laboratory and Institute of Elemento-Organic Chemistry, Key Laboratory of Functional Polymer Materials, College of Chemistry, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, China
Keywords:
phase separation, organic photovoltaic, ternary bulk heterojunction, nonradiative recombination, simple small molecule
Topics:
Organic solar cells
Cite this article:
Feng H, Dai Y, Guo L, et al. Exploring ternary organic photovoltaics for the reduced nonradiative recombination and improved efficiency over 17.23% with a simple large-bandgap small molecular third component. Nano Research, 2022, 15(4): 3222-3229. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-021-3945-3
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Abstract Full text Electronic supplementary material About this article

Ternary strategy is one of the most effective methods to further boost the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of organic photovoltaic cells (OPVs). In terms of high-efficiency PM6:Y6 binary systems, there is still room to further reduce energy loss (Eloss) through regulating molecular packing and aggregation by introducing a third component in the construction of ternary OPVs. Here we introduce a simple molecule BR1 based on an acceptor-donor-acceptor (A-D-A) structure with a wide bandgap and high crystallinity into PM6:Y6-based OPVs. It is proved that BR1 can be selectively dispersed into the donor phase in the PM6:Y6 and reduce disorder in the ternary blends, thus resulting in lower Eloss,non-rad and Eloss. Furthermore, the mechanism study reveals well-develop phase separation morphology and complemented absorption spectra in the ternary blends, leading to higher charge mobility, suppressed recombination, which concurrently contributes to the significantly improved PCE of 17.23% for the ternary system compared with the binary ones (16.21%). This work provides an effective approach to improve the performance of the PM6:Y6-based OPVs by adopting a ternary strategy with a simple molecule as the third component.


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Electronic supplementary material
About this article

Exploring ternary organic photovoltaics for the reduced nonradiative recombination and improved efficiency over 17.23% with a simple large-bandgap small molecular third component

Show Author's information Huanran Feng1( ), Yvjie Dai1, Lihao Guo1, Di Wang2, Hao Dong2, Zhihui Liu1, Lu Zhang1, Yvjin Zhu1, Chen Su1, Yongsheng Chen3, Weiwei Wu1( )
School of Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, Interdisciplinary Research Center of Smart Sensors, Xidian University, Shaanxi 710126, China
Intelligent Perception Research Institute, Zhejiang Lab, Hangzhou 311100, China
State Key Laboratory and Institute of Elemento-Organic Chemistry, Key Laboratory of Functional Polymer Materials, College of Chemistry, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, China

Abstract

Ternary strategy is one of the most effective methods to further boost the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of organic photovoltaic cells (OPVs). In terms of high-efficiency PM6:Y6 binary systems, there is still room to further reduce energy loss (Eloss) through regulating molecular packing and aggregation by introducing a third component in the construction of ternary OPVs. Here we introduce a simple molecule BR1 based on an acceptor-donor-acceptor (A-D-A) structure with a wide bandgap and high crystallinity into PM6:Y6-based OPVs. It is proved that BR1 can be selectively dispersed into the donor phase in the PM6:Y6 and reduce disorder in the ternary blends, thus resulting in lower Eloss,non-rad and Eloss. Furthermore, the mechanism study reveals well-develop phase separation morphology and complemented absorption spectra in the ternary blends, leading to higher charge mobility, suppressed recombination, which concurrently contributes to the significantly improved PCE of 17.23% for the ternary system compared with the binary ones (16.21%). This work provides an effective approach to improve the performance of the PM6:Y6-based OPVs by adopting a ternary strategy with a simple molecule as the third component.

Keywords: phase separation, organic photovoltaic, ternary bulk heterojunction, nonradiative recombination, simple small molecule

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Publication history
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Acknowledgements

Publication history

Received: 27 September 2021
Revised: 16 October 2021
Accepted: 21 October 2021
Published: 04 December 2021
Issue date: April 2022

Copyright

© Tsinghua University Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2021

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 22005234 and 61904134) and Zhejiang Lab (No. 2021MC0AB02).

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