Efficient and Air-Stable Aqueous-Processed Organic Solar Cells and Transistors: Impact of Water Addition on Processability and Thin-Film Morphologies of Electroactive Materials

Changyeon Lee, Hae Rang Lee, Joonhyeong Choi, Youngkwon Kim, Thanh Luan Nguyen, Wonho Lee, Bhoj Gautam, Xiang Liu, Kai Zhang, Fei Huang, Joon Hak Oh, Han Young Woo, Bumjoon J. Kim

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    57 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    The authors report the development of a desirable aqueous process for ecofriendly fabrication of efficient and stable organic field-effect transistors (eco-OFETs) and polymer solar cells (eco-PSCs). Intriguingly, the addition of a typical antisolvent, water, to ethanol is found to remarkably enhance the solubility of oligoethylene glycol (OEG) side chain-based electroactive materials (e.g., the highly crystalline conjugated polymer PPDT2FBT-A and the fullerene monoadduct PC61BO12). A water–ethanol cosolvent with a 1:1 molar ratio provides an increased solubility of PPDT2FBT-A from 2.3 to 42.9 mg mL−1 and that of PC61BO12 from 0.3 to 40.5 mg mL−1. Owing to the improved processability, efficient eco-OFETs with a hole mobility of 2.0 × 10−2 cm2 V−1 s−1 and eco-PSCs with a power conversion efficiency of 2.05% are successfully fabricated. In addition, the eco-PSCs fabricated with water–ethanol processing are highly stable under ambient conditions, showing the great potential of this new process for industrial scale application. To better understand the underlying role of water addition, the influence of water addition on the thin-film morphologies and the performance of the eco-OFETs and eco-PSCs are studied. Additionally, it is demonstrated that the application of the aqueous process can be extended to a variety of other OEG-based material systems.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article number1802674
    JournalAdvanced Energy Materials
    Volume8
    Issue number34
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2018 Dec 5

    Bibliographical note

    Funding Information:
    This research was supported by the National Research Foundation Grant (2017M3A7B8065584, 2012M3A6A7055540), funded by the Korean Government. H.Y. Woo is grateful for the financial support from Korea University (KU future research grant).

    Publisher Copyright:
    © 2018 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

    Keywords

    • ecofriendly solution processing
    • oligoethylene glycol-based conjugated materials
    • organic field-effect transistors
    • polymer solar cells
    • water–ethanol cosolvent

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment
    • General Materials Science

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