TY - JOUR
T1 - Geometry design of tethered small-molecule acceptor enables highly stable and efficient polymer solar cells
AU - Bai, Yang
AU - Zhang, Ze
AU - Zhou, Qiuju
AU - Geng, Hua
AU - Chen, Qi
AU - Kim, Seoyoung
AU - Zhang, Rui
AU - Zhang, Cen
AU - Chang, Bowen
AU - Li, Shangyu
AU - Fu, Hongyuan
AU - Xue, Lingwei
AU - Wang, Haiqiao
AU - Li, Wenbin
AU - Chen, Weihua
AU - Gao, Mengyuan
AU - Ye, Long
AU - Zhou, Yuanyuan
AU - Ouyang, Yanni
AU - Zhang, Chunfeng
AU - Gao, Feng
AU - Yang, Changduk
AU - Li, Yongfang
AU - Zhang, Zhi Guo
N1 - The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 21734008, 22175014, and 22273062), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (buctrc201822). Q.Z. thanks the NanHu Young Scholar Supporting Program of XYNU. C.Y. thanks the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korean government (MSIP) (2021R1A2C3004202).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, The Author(s).
PY - 2023/5/22
Y1 - 2023/5/22
N2 - With the power conversion efficiency of binary polymer solar cells dramatically improved, the thermal stability of the small-molecule acceptors raised the main concerns on the device operating stability. Here, to address this issue, thiophene-dicarboxylate spacer tethered small-molecule acceptors are designed, and their molecular geometries are further regulated via the thiophene-core isomerism engineering, affording dimeric TDY-α with a 2, 5-substitution and TDY-β with 3, 4-substitution on the core. It shows that TDY-α processes a higher glass transition temperature, better crystallinity relative to its individual small-molecule acceptor segment and isomeric counterpart of TDY-β, and a more stable morphology with the polymer donor. As a result, the TDY-α based device delivers a higher device efficiency of 18.1%, and most important, achieves an extrapolated lifetime of about 35000 hours that retaining 80% of their initial efficiency. Our result suggests that with proper geometry design, the tethered small-molecule acceptors can achieve both high device efficiency and operating stability.
AB - With the power conversion efficiency of binary polymer solar cells dramatically improved, the thermal stability of the small-molecule acceptors raised the main concerns on the device operating stability. Here, to address this issue, thiophene-dicarboxylate spacer tethered small-molecule acceptors are designed, and their molecular geometries are further regulated via the thiophene-core isomerism engineering, affording dimeric TDY-α with a 2, 5-substitution and TDY-β with 3, 4-substitution on the core. It shows that TDY-α processes a higher glass transition temperature, better crystallinity relative to its individual small-molecule acceptor segment and isomeric counterpart of TDY-β, and a more stable morphology with the polymer donor. As a result, the TDY-α based device delivers a higher device efficiency of 18.1%, and most important, achieves an extrapolated lifetime of about 35000 hours that retaining 80% of their initial efficiency. Our result suggests that with proper geometry design, the tethered small-molecule acceptors can achieve both high device efficiency and operating stability.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85159815336&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38673-5
U2 - 10.1038/s41467-023-38673-5
DO - 10.1038/s41467-023-38673-5
M3 - Journal article
C2 - 37217503
AN - SCOPUS:85159815336
SN - 2041-1723
VL - 14
JO - Nature Communications
JF - Nature Communications
IS - 1
M1 - 2926
ER -