Introducing Low‐Cost Pyrazine Unit into Terpolymer Enables High‐Performance Polymer Solar Cells with Efficiency of 18.23%

Abstract

Recently, a random ternary copolymerization strategy has become a promising and efficient approach to develop high‐performance polymer donors for polymer solar cells (PSCs). In this study, a low‐cost electron‐withdrawing unit, 2,5‐bis(4‐(2‐ethylhexyl)thiophen‐2‐yl)pyrazine (PZ‐T), is incorporated into the polymer backbone of PM6 as the third component, and three D‐A1‐D‐A2 type terpolymers PMZ‐10, PMZ‐20, and PMZ‐30 are synthesized by the random copolymerization strategy, with the PZ‐T proportion of 10%, 20%, and 30%, respectively. The terpolymers exhibit downshifted highest occupied molecular orbital energy levels than PM6, which is beneficial for obtaining higher open‐circuit voltage (Voc) of the PSCs with the polymer as a donor. Importantly, the PSCs based on PMZ‐10:Y6 demonstrate efficient exciton dissociation, higher and balanced electron/hole mobilities, desirable aggregation, and high power conversion efficiency of 18.23%, which is the highest efficiency among the terpolymer‐based PSCs so far. The results indicate that the ternary copolymerization strategy with PZ‐T as the second A‐unit is an efficient approach to further improve the photovoltaic performance and reduce the synthetic cost of the D‐A copolymer donors.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Nov 08, 2021
Source ID
10.1002/adfm.202109271

Entities

People

  • Can Zhu
  • Harald Ade
  • Indunil Angunawela
  • Jinyuan Zhang
  • Lei Meng
  • Liuyang Zhou
  • Shucheng Qin
  • Yan Wan
  • Yongfang Li

Organizations

  • Beijing Normal University
  • Institute of Chemistry
  • North Carolina State University
  • Office of Basic Energy Sciences
  • Office of Science
  • Soochow University
  • United States Department of Energy
  • University of Chinese Academy of Sciences

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Materials science

Readers

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

Technology Areas

  • Microelectronics
  • Space