Novel wide-bandgap non-fullerene acceptors for efficient tandem organic solar cells
Journal article, 2020

The power conversion efficiency (PCE) of tandem organic photovoltaics (OPVs) is currently limited by the lack of suitable wide-bandgap materials for the front-cell. Here, two new acceptor molecules, namely IDTA and IDTTA, with optical bandgaps (Eoptg) of 1.90 and 1.75 eV, respectively, are synthesized and studied for application in OPVs. When PBDB-T is used as the donor polymer, single-junction cells with PCE of 7.4%, for IDTA, and 10.8%, for IDTTA, are demonstrated. The latter value is the highest PCE reported to date for wide-bandgap (Eoptg ≥ 1.7 eV) bulk-heterojunction OPV cells. The higher carrier mobility in IDTTA-based cells leads to improved charge extraction and higher fill-factor than IDTA-based devices. Moreover, IDTTA-based OPVs show significantly improved shelf-lifetime and thermal stability, both critical for any practical applications. With the aid of optical-electrical device modelling, we combined PBDB-T:IDTTA, as the front-cell, with PTB7-Th:IEICO-4F, as the back-cell, to realize tandem OPVs with open circuit voltage of 1.66 V, short circuit current of 13.6 mA cm-2 and a PCE of 15%; in excellent agreement with our theoretical predictions. The work highlights IDTTA as a promising wide-bandgap acceptor for high-performance tandem OPVs. © 2019 The Royal Society of Chemistry.

Author

Yuliar Firdaus

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)

Qiao He

Imperial College London

Yuanbao Lin

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)

Ferry Nugroho

Chalmers, Physics, Chemical Physics

Vincent M. Le Corre

University of Groningen

Emre Yengel

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)

Ahmed H. Balawi

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)

Akmaral Seitkhan

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)

Frédéric Laquai

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)

Christoph Langhammer

Chalmers, Physics, Chemical Physics

Feng Liu

Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Martin Heeney

Imperial College London

Thomas D. Anthopoulos

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)

Journal of Materials Chemistry A

20507488 (ISSN) 20507496 (eISSN)

Vol. 8 3 1164-1175

Areas of Advance

Nanoscience and Nanotechnology

Subject Categories

Textile, Rubber and Polymeric Materials

Other Physics Topics

Other Medical Biotechnology

Infrastructure

Chalmers Materials Analysis Laboratory

Nanofabrication Laboratory

DOI

10.1039/c9ta11752k

More information

Latest update

8/27/2020