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Material insights and challenges for non-fullerene organic solar cells based on small molecular acceptors

Nature Energy volume 3, pages 720–731 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

The field of non-fullerene organic solar cells has experienced rapid development during the past few years, mainly driven by the development of novel non-fullerene acceptors and matching donor semiconductors. However, organic solar cell material development has progressed via a trial-and-error approach with limited understanding of the materials’ structure–property relationships and the underlying device physics of non-fullerene devices. In addition, the availability of hundreds of donor and acceptor semiconductors creates an extremely large pool of possible donor–acceptor combinations, which poses a daunting challenge for rational material screening and matching. This Review describes several important conceptual aspects of the emerging non-fullerene devices by highlighting key contributions that provided fundamental insights regarding rational material design, donor–acceptor pair matching, blend morphology control and the reduced voltage losses in non-fullerene organic solar cells. We also discuss the key challenges that need to be addressed to develop more-efficient non-fullerene organic solar cells.

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Fig. 1: The voltage loss of solar cells.
Fig. 2: PDI-based non-fullerene small molecular acceptors.
Fig. 3: IDT-based non-fullerene small molecular acceptors.
Fig. 4: SubPc-based non-fullerene small molecular acceptors for vacuum-deposited OSCs.
Fig. 5: Comparisons between pure/crystalline and impure/amorphous domains in BHJ blends.
Fig. 6: Morphology control using donor polymers with temperature-dependent aggregation.
Fig. 7: Burn-in losses of fullerene and non-fullerene OSCs.

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Acknowledgements

H.Y. and J.Z. acknowledge financial support from the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program; 2013CB834705), the Hong Kong Research Grants Council (T23–407/13-N, N_HKUST623/13, and 606012), the National Science Foundation of China (#21374090) and the Hong Kong Innovation and Technology Commission (ITC-CNERC14SC01). A.F. acknowledges the US National Science Foundation Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers program through the Northwestern University Materials Research Center (grant DMR-1121262) and US Air Force Office of Scientific Research (Grant FA9550-15-1-0044) for financial support. X.G. acknowledges financial support from National Science Foundation of China (51573076), Shenzhen Peacock Plan project (KQTD20140630110339343) and South University of Science and Technology of China (FRG-SUSTC1501A-72).

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  1. These authors contributed equally: Jianquan Zhang, Huei Shuan Tan.

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  1. Department of Chemistry, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China

    Jianquan Zhang & He Yan

  2. EFlexPV Limited, Jinxiu Science Park, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China

    Huei Shuan Tan

  3. Department of Materials Science and Engineering and The Shenzhen Key Laboratory for Printed Organic Electronics, South University of Science and Technology of China, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China

    Xugang Guo

  4. Department of Chemistry, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Antonio Facchetti

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Zhang, J., Tan, H.S., Guo, X. et al. Material insights and challenges for non-fullerene organic solar cells based on small molecular acceptors. Nat Energy 3, 720–731 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-018-0181-5

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