Quaternary Organic Solar Cells Enable Suppressed Energy Loss

Multi-component organic solar cells (OSCs) composing of more than two donor and acceptor materials have attracted increasing attention, due to the possibilities to further mitigate voltage loss (Delta V-oc) for the gain of open-circuit voltage (V-oc). However, the control of phase morphology in multi-component blend systems that critically impacts Delta V-oc and the ultimate power conversion efficiency (PCE) is still a challenge. Here, we report a quaternary blend-based strategy for non-fullerene OSCs by using two polymer donors (PM6 and L20) along with acceptors of a non-fullerene (Y6) and PC71BM, leading to concurrent improvements of the V-oc, device fill factor and eventual PCE. The quaternary OSC exhibits the advantages of a higher charge collection efficiency, expedited charge carrier sweep-out, and reduced charge recombination losses. The suppression on Delta V-oc is attributed to the reduced radiative recombination loss below the bandgap (0.143 V) and non-radiative voltage loss (0.216 V). These properties are linked to synergies of modified energetics and film morphology of the quaternary blends. This work demonstrates that incorporating suitable donor and acceptor guest molecules to organic binary blend systems is a highly viable approach for lowering the energy loss in organic bulk heterojunctions towards the boost of photovoltaic performance for realistic energy conversion applications.

Automated summary

This study presents a quaternary blend-based strategy for non-fullerene organic solar cells, which leads to concurrent improvements in the device performance and photovoltaic efficiency.