Rationally pairing photoactive materials for high-performance polymer solar cells with efficiency of 16.53%

The emergence of non-fullerene acceptors (NFA) offers a promising opportunity to develop high-performance donor/acceptor pairs with high power conversion efficiency, as NFAs offer tunable energy levels, broad absorption and suitable aggregation property. In order to enhance light-harvesting capability of active layers, we choose a wide bandgap polymer PTQ10 as the donor to blend with a narrow bandgap NFA Y6 as the acceptor. In comparison with PTQ10:IDIC blend, similar to 130 nm red-shifted absorption spectrum is observed in the PTQ10:Y6 blend, which potentially enhance the short-circuit current density (J(sc)) for the PSCs. In addition, the optimal PTQ10:Y6 blend shows higher photoluminescence quenching efficiency and more efficient charge separation, higher charge mobilities, as well as weaker bimolecular recombination over the PTQ10:IDIC blend, which leads to an outstanding power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 16.53%, with a notable J(sc) of 26.65 mA cm(-2) and fill factor (FF) of 0.751.