Over 18.1% Efficiency of Layer-by-Layer Polymer Solar Cells by Enhancing Exciton Utilization near the ITO Electrode

Xiaoling Ma, Wenjing Xu, Zhongyuan Liu, Sang Young Jeong, Chunyu Xu, Jian Zhang, Han Young Woo, Zhengji Zhou, Fujun Zhang

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    39 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    In this work, layer-by-layer (LbL) polymer solar cells (PSCs) are constructed without/with the incorporation of a dissociation strengthening layer (DSL) on the basis of the wide-bandgap donor D18-Cl, as well as the narrow-bandgap nonfullerene acceptor Y6. The efficiency of LbL PSCs is enhanced from 17.62 to 18.15% through introducing a DSL, originating from the enhanced dissociation of D18-Cl excitons near the ITO electrode. Meanwhile, the interfacial energy between D18-Cl and Y6 layers is decreased by incorporating a DSL, which should facilitate molecular interdiffusion for more adequate exciton dissociation in LbL active layers. This work offers a simple and resultful way for realizing power conversion efficiency (PCE) improvement of LbL PSCs with maximized exciton utilization in LbL active layers. The universality of the DSL incorporation strategy on performance improvement can be further confirmed with a boosted PCE from 17.39 to 18.03% or from 17.13 to 17.61% for D18-Cl/L8-BO- or D18-Cl/N3-based LbL PSCs by incorporating a DSL.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)7247-7254
    Number of pages8
    JournalACS Applied Materials and Interfaces
    Volume15
    Issue number5
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2023 Feb 8

    Bibliographical note

    Funding Information:
    This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2022JBMC046), NSFC (62105017, 61975006, and 62175011), and NSFC-STINT (62211530056).

    Publisher Copyright:
    © 2023 American Chemical Society.

    Keywords

    • dissociation strengthening layer
    • exciton utilization
    • layer-by-layer method
    • molecular interdiffusion
    • polymer solar cells

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • General Materials Science

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