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Over 16.7% efficiency of ternary organic photovoltaics by employing extra PC71BM as morphology regulator

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Abstract

Ternary organic photovoltaics (OPVs) are fabricated with PBDB-T-2Cl:Y6 (1:1.2, wt/wt) as the host system and extra PC71BM as the third component. The PBDB-T-2Cl:Y6 based binary OPVs exhibit a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 15.49% with a short circuit current (JSC) of 24.98 mA cm−2, an open circuit voltage (VOC) of 0.868 V and a fill factor (FF) of 71.42%. A 16.71% PCE is obtained in the optimized ternary OPVs with PBDB-T-2Cl:Y6:PC71BM (1:1.2:0.2, wt/wt) active layer, resulting from the synchronously improved JSC of 25.44 mA cm−2, FF of 75.66% and the constant VOC of 0.868 V. The incorporated PC71BM may prefer to mix with Y6 to finely adjust phase separation, domain size and molecular arrangement in ternary active layers, which can be confirmed from the characterization on morphology, 2D grazing incidence small and wide-angle X-ray scattering, as well as Raman mapping. In addition, PC71BM may prefer to mix with Y6 to form efficient electron transport channels, which should be conducive to charge transport and collection in the optimized ternary OPVs. This work provides more insight into the underlying reasons of the third component on performance improvement of ternary OPVs, indicating ternary strategy should be an efficient method to optimize active layers for synchronously improving photon harvesting, exciton dissociation and charge transport, while keeping the simple cell fabrication technology.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (61675017), Beijing Natural Science Foundation (4192049). The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility (beamline BL16B1) for GWAIXS and GISAXS measurements.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Luminescence and Optical Information, Ministry of Education, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, 100044, China

    Jinhua Gao, Qiaoshi An, Xiaoling Ma, Zhenghao Hu, Chunyu Xu & Fujun Zhang

  2. College of Physics and Electronic Engineering, Taishan University, Taian, 271021, China

    Jian Wang

  3. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, 450001, China

    Xiaoli Zhang

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  1. Jinhua Gao
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  2. Jian Wang
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  3. Qiaoshi An
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  4. Xiaoling Ma
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  6. Chunyu Xu
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  7. Xiaoli Zhang
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Correspondence to Fujun Zhang.

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Gao, J., Wang, J., An, Q. et al. Over 16.7% efficiency of ternary organic photovoltaics by employing extra PC71BM as morphology regulator. Sci. China Chem. 63, 83–91 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11426-019-9634-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11426-019-9634-5

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