Ternary Organic Photovoltaics Prepared by Sequential Deposition of Single Donor and Binary Acceptors

Yunju Cho, Thanh Luan Nguyen, Hyerim Oh, Ka Yeon Ryu, Han Young Woo, Kyungkon Kim

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    24 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Binary organic photovoltaics (OPVs) fabricated by single-step (SS) deposition of a binary blend of polymer (or small molecule) donor and fullerene acceptor (SS binary OPV) are widely utilized. To improve the OPV performance, SS ternary OPVs utilizing a ternary blend consisting of two (or one) electron donor(s) and one (or two) electron acceptor(s) have been studied. SS ternary OPVs require more sensitive and complex optimization processes to optimize bulk heterojunctions with bicontinuous nanoscale phase separation of the donor and acceptor. We demonstrated a novel ternary OPV fabricated by sequential (SQ) deposition of a single polymer donor and a binary mixture consisting of a phenyl-C 71 -butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) and nonfullerene acceptor, 3,9-bis(2-methylene-(3-(1,1-dicyanomethylene)-indanone))-5,5,11,11-tetrakis(4-hexylphenyl)-dithieno[2,3-d:2,3′-d′]-s-indaceno[1,2-b:5,6-b′]dithiophene (ITIC). In the SQ ternary OPV, PCBM effectively created a bicontinuous pathway for charge transport with a polymer, and ITIC mainly enhanced light absorption and photovoltage. This complementary effect was not observed in an SS ternary OPV utilizing the same donor and acceptors. Due to these complementary effects, the SQ ternary OPV exhibited a power conversion efficiency of 6.22%, which was 52 and 37% higher than that of the SQ binary OPV and the SS ternary OPV, respectively. In addition, the thermal stability of the SQ ternary OPV was found to be superior to that of the SS ternary OPV.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)27757-27763
    Number of pages7
    JournalACS Applied Materials and Interfaces
    Volume10
    Issue number33
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2018 Aug 22

    Keywords

    • binary acceptor
    • nonfullerene acceptor
    • sequential solution deposition
    • ternary organic solar cell
    • thermal stability

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • General Materials Science

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