Linkage Regulation of Back-To-Back Connected Dimers as Guest Acceptors Enables Organic Solar Cells with Excellent Efficiency, Stability and Flexibility

High efficiency, stability, and flexibility are key prerequisites for the commercial applications of organic solar cells (OSCs). Herein, three back-to-back connected dimers (2Qx-TT, 2Qx-C3, 2Qx-C6) are developed as the guest acceptors for OSCs with improved comprehensive performance. By regulating the linkage from rigid bithiophene to flexible alkyl chain, the back-to-back connected dimers display quite different molecular geometry and intermolecular interactions, consequently influencing their packing arrangement, film-forming process, carrier mobilities, and the device efficiency, stability, and flexibility. By introducing these dimer acceptors as the guest into active layer, these dimers form alloy phases with the host acceptor, promoting film-forming process and charge dynamics. All ternary devices exhibit improved PCEs of over 18% than the control binary device. Among them, 2Qx-C3-based ternary device obtains the best efficiency of as high as 19.03%. Moreover, thanks to the stronger entanglement favored by the dimers with flexible linkage, the PM6:BTP-eC9:2Qx-C3-based device shows outstanding stability and flexibility. The flexible device displays an improved PCE of 16.09% with a crack-onset strain of 15.0%, showing excellent mechanical robustness close to the all-polymer devices. This work demonstrates the potential of the back-to-back connected dimer acceptors as the guest for highly efficient, stable and flexible OSCs.