Abstract
We demonstrate high-performance sequentially solution-processed organic photovoltaics (OPVs) with a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 5% for blend films using a donor polymer based on the isoindigo-bithiophene repeat unit (PII2T-C10C8) and a fullerene derivative [6,6]-phenyl-C[71]-butyric acid methyl ester (PC71BM). This has been accomplished by systematically controlling the swelling and intermixing processes of the layer with various processing solvents during deposition of the fullerene. We find that among the solvents used for fullerene deposition that primarily swell but do not re-dissolve the polymer underlayer, there were significant microstructural differences between chloro and o-dichlorobenzene solvents (CB and ODCB, respectively). Specifically, we show that the polymer crystallite orientation distribution in films where ODCB was used to cast the fullerene is broad. This indicates that out-of-plane charge transport through a tortuous transport network is relatively efficient due to a large density of inter-grain connections. In contrast, using CB results in primarily edge-on oriented polymer crystallites, which leads to diminished out-of-plane charge transport. We correlate these microstructural differences with photocurrent measurements, which clearly show that casting the fullerene out of ODCB leads to significantly enhanced power conversion efficiencies. Thus, we believe that tuning the processing solvents used to cast the electron acceptor in sequentially-processed devices is a viable way to controllably tune the blend film microstructure. © 2014 The Royal Society of Chemistry.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1103 |
| Journal | Energy & Environmental Science |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2014 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
KAUST Repository Item: Exported on 2020-10-01Acknowledged KAUST grant number(s): KUS-C1-015-21
Acknowledgements: This work was partially supported by the Center for Advanced Molecular Photovoltaics, award no. KUS-C1-015-21, made by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology and the Department of Energy, Laboratory Directed Research and Development funding, under contract DE-AC02-76SF00515 (M.F.T. and K.S.). We also acknowledge support from the Global Climate and Energy Program at Stanford and the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Postdoctoral Program in Environmental Chemistry (J.M. and A.L.A). D.H.K acknowledges financial support by a grant (Code No. 2011-0031628) from the Center for Advanced Soft Electronics under the Global Frontier Research Program of the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, Korea. GIXD measurements were carried out at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, a national user facility operated by Stanford University on behalf of the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences.
This publication acknowledges KAUST support, but has no KAUST affiliated authors.