Naphthalene Diimide-Based n-Type Polymers: Efficient Rear Interlayers for High-Performance Silicon-Organic Heterojunction Solar Cells

Silicon-organic heterojunction solar cells suffer from a noticeable weakness of inefficient rear contact. To improve this rear contact quality, here, two solution-processed organic n-type donor-acceptor naphthalene diimide (NDI)-based conjugated polymers of N2200 and fluorinated analogue F-N2200 are explored to reduce the contact resistance as well as to passivate the Si surface. Both N2200 and F-N2200 exhibit high electron mobility due to their planar structure and strong intermolecular stacking, thus allowing them to act as excellent transporting layers. Preferential orientation of the polymers leads to reduce contact resistance between Si and cathode aluminum, which can enhance electron extraction. More importantly, the substitution of fluorine atoms for hydrogen atoms within the conjugated polymer can strengthen the intermolecular stacking and improve the polymer Si electronic contact due to the existence of F center dot center dot center dot H interactions. The power conversion efficiencies of Si-PEDOT:PSS solar cells increased from 12.6 to 14.5% as a consequence of incorporating the F-N2200 polymer interlayers. Subsequently, in-depth density functional theory simulations confirm that the polymer orientation plays a critical role on the polymer-Si contact quality. The success of NDI-based polymers indicates that planar conjugated polymer with a preferred orientation could be useful in developing high-performance solution-processed Si-organic heterojunction photovoltaic devices.