Enabling low voltage losses and high photocurrent in fullerene-free organic photovoltaics

Abstract

Despite significant development recently, improving the power conversion efficiency of organic photovoltaics (OPVs) is still an ongoing challenge to overcome. One of the prerequisites to achieving this goal is to enable efficient charge separation and small voltage losses at the same time. In this work, a facile synthetic strategy is reported, where optoelectronic properties are delicately tuned by the introduction of electron-deficient-core-based fused structure into non-fullerene acceptors. Both devices exhibited a low voltage loss of 0.57 V and high short-circuit current density of 22.0 mA cm(-2), resulting in high power conversion efficiencies of over 13.4%. These unconventional electron-deficient-core-based non-fullerene acceptors with near-infrared absorption lead to low non-radiative recombination losses in the resulting organic photovoltaics, contributing to a certified high power conversion efficiency of 12.6%. ; Funding Agencies|Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) [FA2386-15-1-4108, FA9550e15-1e0610, FA9550-15-1-0333]; UC-Solar Program [MRPI 328368]; National Key Research & Development Projects of China [2017YFA0206600]; National Natural Science Foundation of China [21875286]; Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars of Hunan Province [2017JJ1029]; Swedish Energy Agency Energimyndigheten [2016-010174]; Swedish Government Strategic Research Area in Materials Science on Functional Materials at Linkoping University [2009-00971]