Subtle Molecular Tailoring Induces Significant Morphology Optimization Enabling over 16% Efficiency Organic Solar Cells with Efficient Charge Generation

Manipulating charge generation in a broad spectral region has proved to be crucial for nonfullerene-electron-acceptor-based organic solar cells (OSCs). 16.64% high efficiency binary OSCs are achieved through the use of a novel electron acceptor AQx-2 with quinoxaline-containing fused core and PBDB-TF as donor. The significant increase in photovoltaic performance of AQx-2 based devices is obtained merely by a subtle tailoring in molecular structure of its analogue AQx-1. Combining the detailed morphology and transient absorption spectroscopy analyses, a good structure-morphology-property relationship is established. The stronger pi-pi interaction results in efficient electron hopping and balanced electron and hole mobilities attributed to good charge transport. Moreover, the reduced phase separation morphology of AQx-2-based bulk heterojunction blend boosts hole transfer and suppresses geminate recombination. Such success in molecule design and precise morphology optimization may lead to next-generation high-performance OSCs.