Conjugation expansion strategy enables highly stable all-polymer solar cells

The stability issue is one of the key factors hindering the commercial application of organic solar cells. All-polymer organic solar cell is one of the effective ways to solve the stability problem. In this work, we designed and synthesized two polymer donor materials PBDT and PDTBDT with different conjugation ranges, and demonstrated for the first time that extending the conjugation range of donor materials in all polymer solar cells can significantly improve device efficiency and stability. The experimental results of materials and devices show that PDTBDT with a larger conjugation range has stronger crystallinity and a more planar structure, which endows the active layer in its corresponding device with higher exciton dissociation probability, lower carrier recombination probability, more balanced charge transport properties and more favorable film morphology. As a result, the PDTBDT:PYF-T- o devices display an outstanding PCE of 13.38%, which is much higher than PBDT with smaller conjugation range based devices. Moreover, the PDTBDT:PYF-T- o device retains 0.86 of the initial PCE after over 500 h in the air atmosphere, exhibiting significantly improved stability. The improved stability is attributed to the enhanced moisture and air tolerance of active layer film thanks to the strong crystallinity of the donor material. These results demonstrate that the conjugation expansion strategy is one of the effective ways to obtain efficient and stable all-polymer organic solar cells.& COPY; 2023 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Chinese Chemical Society and Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences.

Automated summary

In this study, two polymer donor materials, PBDT and PDTBDT, with different conjugation ranges were designed and synthesized. It was demonstrated for the first time that extending the conjugation range of donor materials in all-polymer solar cells can significantly improve device efficiency and stability. The experimental results showed that the donor material with a larger conjugation range had stronger crystallinity and a more planar structure, resulting in higher exciton dissociation probability, lower carrier recombination probability, more balanced charge transport properties, and more favorable film morphology. The all-polymer solar cell with PDTBDT as the donor material exhibited outstanding efficiency and significantly improved stability.