Balanced charge transport optimizes industry-relevant ternary polymer solar cells

Robin Szymanski (1, 2) , Reece Henry (3) , Samuel H Stuard (3) , Uyxing Vongsaysy (2) , Stéphanie Courtel (2) , Luc Vellutini (4) , Mélanie Bertrand (2) , Harald Ade (3) , Sylvain Chambon (1, 5) , Guillaume Wantz (1)

1 IMS - Laboratoire de l'intégration, du matériau au système
2 ARMOR SAS
3 North Carolina A&T State University
4 ISM - Institut des Sciences Moléculaires
5 LIMMS - Laboratory for Integrated Micro Mechatronics Systems

Bulk heterojunction polymer solar cells based on a novel combination of materials are fabricated using industry-compliant conditions for large area manufacturing. The relatively low-cost polymer PTQ10 is paired with the non-fullerene acceptor 4TIC-4F. Devices are processed using a non-halogenated solvent to comply with industrial usage in absence of any thermal treatment to minimize the energy footprint of the fabrication. No solvent additive is used. Adding the well-known and low-cost fullerene derivative PC61BM acceptor to this binary blend to form a ternary blend, the power conversion efficiency (PCE) was improved from 8.4% to 9.9% due to increased fill factor (FF) and open circuit voltage (VOC), while simultaneously improving the stability. The introduction of PC61BM is able to balance the hole-electron mobility in the ternary blends, which is favourable for high FF. This charge transport behavior is correlated with the bulk heterojunction (BHJ) morphology deduced from Grazing-Incidence Wide-Angle X-ray Scattering (GIWAXS), Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) and surface energy analysis. In addition, the industrial figure of merit (i-FOM) of this ternary blend was found to increase drastically upon addition of PC61BM due to an increased performancestability-cost balance.

Mots clés: Polymer solar cells; low-cost semiconducting polymer; non-chlorinated solvent

Domaines: Matériaux

Robin Szymanski, Reece Henry, Samuel H Stuard, Uyxing Vongsaysy, Stéphanie Courtel, et al.. Balanced charge transport optimizes industry-relevant ternary polymer solar cells. Solar RRL, 2020, 4 (11), pp.2000538. ⟨10.1002/solr.202000538⟩. ⟨hal-03420105⟩