High-Performance Polymer Solar Cell with Single Active Material of Fully Conjugated Block Copolymer Composed of Wide-Band gap Donor and Narrow-Band gap Acceptor Blocks

Ji Hyung Lee, Chang Geun Park, Aesun Kim, Hyung Jong Kim, Youngseo Kim, Sungnam Park, Min Ju Cho, Dong Hoon Choi

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    66 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    We synthesized a novel fully conjugated block copolymer, P3, in which a wide-band gap donor block (P1) was connected to a narrow-band gap acceptor block (P2). As P3 contains P1 block with a wide bandgap and P2 block with a narrow bandgap, it exhibits a very wide complementary absorption. Transient photoluminescence measurement using P3 dilute solution demonstrated intramolecular charge transfer between the P1 block and the P2 block, which was not observed in a P1/P2 blend solution. A P3 thin film showed complete PL quenching because the photoinduced inter-/intramolecular charge transfer states were effectively formed. This phenomenon can play an important role in the photovoltaic properties of P3-based polymer solar cells. A single active material polymer solar cell (SAMPSC) fabricated from P3 alone exhibited a high power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 3.87% with a high open-circuit voltage of 0.93 V and a short-circuit current of 8.26 mA/cm2, demonstrating a much better performance than a binary P1-/P2-based polymer solar cell (PCE = 1.14%). This result facilitates the possible improvement of the photovoltaic performance of SAMPSCs by inducing favorable nanophase segregation between p- and n blocks. In addition, owing to the high morphological stability of the block copolymer, excellent shelf-life was observed in a P3-based SAMPSC compared with a P1/P2-based PSC.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)18974-18983
    Number of pages10
    JournalACS Applied Materials and Interfaces
    Volume10
    Issue number22
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2018 Jun 6

    Bibliographical note

    Funding Information:
    This research was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF2015R1A2A1A05001876) and by the Key Research Institute Program (NRF20100020209). We are grateful to the Pohang Accelerator Laboratory (Pohang, Korea) for allowing us to conduct the grazing incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering (GIWAXS) measurements.

    Publisher Copyright:
    © Copyright 2018 American Chemical Society.

    Keywords

    • charge transfer
    • conjugated block copolymer
    • polymer solar cells
    • single active material
    • stability

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • General Materials Science

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