Boosting the Fill Factor through Sequential Deposition and Homo Hydrocarbon Solvent toward Efficient and Stable All-Polymer Solar Cells

All-polymer solar cells (all-PSCs) have achieved impressive progress in photovoltaic performance and stabilities recently. However, their power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) still trail that of small-molecular acceptor-based organic solar cells (>19%) mainly because of the inferior fill factor (FF). Herein, a combined homo hydrocarbon solvent and sequential deposition (SD) strategy is presented to boost the FF of rigid all-PSCs to 77.7% and achieve a superior PCE of 17.7% with excellent stability, which is among the highest efficiencies reported for all-PSCs thus far. Meanwhile, a remarkable PCE of 14.5% is realized for flexible all-PSCs with outstanding mechanical stability. The blend film morphologies measurements suggest that the SD method enables the formation of an ideal pseudo-bilayer film with bicontinuous interdigitated structure and ordered polymer packing. The numerical simulation result indicates that the FF enhancement mainly results from the efficient exciton diffusion dynamics, increased carrier mobilities, and more balanced electron/hole mobility ratio induced by the developed SD method. This is also confirmed by the FF loss analysis, which manifests that the reduced series resistance and increased shunt resistance are the main reasons for the reduction of FF loss. This work provides a promising strategy to fabricate highly efficient and stable all-PSCs to promote their future development and practical manufacturing.

Automated summary

This study presents a combined homo hydrocarbon solvent and sequential deposition strategy to improve the fill factor and power conversion efficiency of all-polymer solar cells. The results show that this approach leads to the formation of an ideal film structure and enhances the exciton diffusion dynamics and carrier mobilities, resulting in a higher fill factor. The findings provide a promising strategy for the development and manufacturing of highly efficient and stable all-polymer solar cells.