Efficient Charge Transport Enables High Efficiency in Dilute Donor Organic Solar Cells

The donor/acceptor weight ratio is crucial for photovoltaic performance of organic solar cells (OSCs). Here, we systematically investigate the photovoltaic behaviors of PM6:Y6 solar cells with different stoichiometries. It is found that the photovoltaic performance is tolerant to PM6 contents ranging from 10 to 60 wt %. Especially an impressive efficiency over 10% has been achieved in dilute donor solar cells with 10 wt % PM6 enabled by efficient charge generation, electron/ hole transport, slow charge recombination, and field-insensitive extraction. This raises the question about the origin of efficient hole transport in such dilute donor structure. By investigating hole mobilities of PM6 diluted in Y6 and insulators, we find that effective hole transport pathway is mainly through PM6 phase in PM6:Y6 blends despite with low PM6 content. The results indicate that a low fraction of polymer donors combines with near-infrared nonfullerene acceptors could achieve high photovoltaic performance, which might be a candidate for semitransparent windows.

Automated summary

The study found that efficient photovoltaic performance can be achieved in dilute donor solar cells with 10% PM6, mainly due to the effective hole transport pathway through the PM6 phase.