Effectiveness of Solvent Vapor Annealing over Thermal Annealing on the Photovoltaic Performance of Non-Fullerene Acceptor Based BHJ Solar Cells

Ram, D., Suman, A., Bagui, A. S., Sharma, R., Gupta, V., Yoo, S., Kumar, S. and Singh, S. P. (2019) Effectiveness of Solvent Vapor Annealing over Thermal Annealing on the Photovoltaic Performance of Non-Fullerene Acceptor Based BHJ Solar Cells. Scientific Reports, 9, 8529. (doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-44232-0) (PMID:31189940) (PMCID:PMC6561915)

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Abstract

We explore two small molecules containing arms of dicyano-n-hexylrhodanine and diathiafulvalene wings terminated with benzothiadiazole linker, denoted as BAF-4CN and BAF-2HDT, respectively, as small molecule non-fullerene acceptors (SMNFAs) in organic solar cells. The proposed materials are mixed with a low band gap polymer donor PTB7-Th having broad absorption in the range of 400–750 nm to form solution-processed bulk heterojunctions (BHJs). The photoluminescence (PL) measurements show that both donor and acceptor can quench each other’s PL effectively, implying that not only electrons are transferred from PTB7-Th → SMNFAs but also holes are transferred from SMNFAs → PTB7-Th for efficient photocurrent generation. Furthermore, solvent vapor annealing (SVA) processing is shown to yield a more balanced hole and electron mobility and thus suppresses the trap-assisted recombination significantly. With this dual charge transfer enabled via fine-tuning of end-groups and SVA treatment, power conversion efficiency of approximately 10% is achieved, demonstrating the feasibility of the proposed approach.

Item Type:Articles
Additional Information:S.P.S. thanks DST Indo-Poland project DST/INT/POL/P-26/2016. Suman is grateful to UGC for her fellowship. IICT Communication Number: IICT/Pubs./2019/170.
Status:Published
Refereed:Yes
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:Kumar, Professor Shanmugam
Authors: Ram, D., Suman, A., Bagui, A. S., Sharma, R., Gupta, V., Yoo, S., Kumar, S., and Singh, S. P.
College/School:College of Science and Engineering > School of Engineering > Systems Power and Energy
Journal Name:Scientific Reports
Publisher:Nature Research
ISSN:2045-2322
ISSN (Online):2045-2322
Copyright Holders:Copyright © The Author(s) 2019
First Published:First published in Scientific Reports 9:8529
Publisher Policy:Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence

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