A Chlorinated Donor Polymer Achieving High‐Performance Organic Solar Cells with a Wide Range of Polymer Molecular Weight

Abstract

In the field of non‐fullerene organic solar cells (OSCs), compared to the rapid development of non‐fullerene acceptors, the progress of high‐performance donor polymers is relatively slow. The property and performance of donor polymers in OSCs are often sensitive to the molecular weight of the polymers. In this study, a chlorinated donor polymer named D18‐Cl is reported, which can achieve high performance with a wide range of polymer molecular weight. The devices based on D18‐Cl show a higher open‐circuit voltage (VOC) due to the slightly deeper energy levels and an outstanding short‐circuit current density (JSC) owing to the appropriate long periods of blend films and less ([6,6]‐phenyl‐C71‐butyric acid methyl ester) (PC71BM) in mixed domains, leading to the higher efficiency of 17.97% than those of the D18‐based devices (17.21%). Meanwhile, D18‐Cl can achieve high efficiencies (17.30–17.97%) when its number‐averaged molecular weight (Mn) is ranged from 45 to 72 kDa. In contrast, the D18‐based devices only exhibit relatively high efficiencies in a narrow Mn range of ≈70 kDa. Such property and performance make D18‐Cl a promising donor polymer for scale‐up and low‐cost production.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Jun 16, 2021
Source ID
10.1002/adfm.202102413

Entities

People

  • Anping Zeng
  • Ao Shang
  • Fujun Zhang
  • Ha Kyung Kim
  • Harald Ade
  • He Yan
  • Heng Zhao
  • Huiliang Sun
  • Indunil Chathurangani Angunawela
  • Jianquan Zhang
  • Joshua Yuk Lin Lai
  • Mingao Pan
  • Ruijie Ma
  • Siwei Luo
  • Wei Ma
  • Xiaoling Ma
  • Yuan Chang
  • Yuzhong Chen
  • Zhenyu Qi

Organizations

  • Beijing Jiaotong University
  • Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
  • Innovation and Technology Commission
  • National Natural Science Foundation of China
  • North Carolina State University
  • Office of Basic Energy Sciences
  • Office of Naval Research
  • Office of Science
  • Southern University of Science and Technology
  • United States Department of Energy
  • Xi'an Jiaotong University

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Materials science

Readers

  • Polymer Science and Technology
  • Solar Photovoltaics and Thermoelectric Devices.