| 1. |
- Chen, Xian-Kai, et al.
(författare)
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A unified description of non-radiative voltage losses in organic solar cells
- 2021
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Ingår i: Nature Energy. - : Springer Nature. - 2058-7546. ; 6:8, s. 799-806
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Organic solar cells based on non-fullerene acceptors have enabled high efficiencies yet their charge dynamics and its impact on the photovoltaic parameters are not fully understood. Now, Chen et al. provide a general description of non-radiative voltage losses in both fullerene and non-fullerene solar cells. Recent advances in organic solar cells based on non-fullerene acceptors (NFAs) come with reduced non-radiative voltage losses (Delta V-nr). Here we show that, in contrast to the energy-gap-law dependence observed in conventional donor:fullerene blends, the Delta V-nr values in state-of-the-art donor:NFA organic solar cells show no correlation with the energies of charge-transfer electronic states at donor:acceptor interfaces. By combining temperature-dependent electroluminescence experiments and dynamic vibronic simulations, we provide a unified description of Delta V-nr for both fullerene- and NFA-based devices. We highlight the critical role that the thermal population of local exciton states plays in low-Delta V-nr systems. An important finding is that the photoluminescence yield of the pristine materials defines the lower limit of Delta V-nr. We also demonstrate that the reduction in Delta V-nr (for example, <0.2 V) can be obtained without sacrificing charge generation efficiency. Our work suggests designing donor and acceptor materials with high luminescence efficiency and complementary optical absorption bands extending into the near-infrared region.
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| 2. |
- Cui, Yong, et al.
(författare)
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Efficient Semitransparent Organic Solar Cells with Tunable Color enabled by an Ultralow-Bandgap Nonfullerene Acceptor
- 2017
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Ingår i: Advanced Materials. - : WILEY-V C H VERLAG GMBH. - 0935-9648 .- 1521-4095. ; 29:43
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Semitransparent organic solar cells (OSCs) show attractive potential in power-generating windows. However, the development of semitransparent OSCs is lagging behind opaque OSCs. Here, an ultralow-bandgap non-fullerene acceptor, "IEICO-4Cl", is designed and synthesized, whose absorption spectrum is mainly located in the near-infrared region. When IEICO-4Cl is blended with different polymer donors (J52, PBDB-T, and PTB7-Th), the colors of the blend films can be tuned from purple to blue to cyan, respectively. Traditional OSCs with a nontransparent Al electrode fabricated by J52: IEICO-4Cl, PBDB-T: IEICO-4Cl, and PTB7-Th: IEICO-4Cl yield power conversion efficiencies (PCE) of 9.65 +/- 0.33%, 9.43 +/- 0.13%, and 10.0 +/- 0.2%, respectively. By using 15 nm Au as the electrode, semitransparent OSCs based on these three blends also show PCEs of 6.37%, 6.24%, and 6.97% with high average visible transmittance (AVT) of 35.1%, 35.7%, and 33.5%, respectively. Furthermore, via changing the thickness of Au in the OSCs, the relationship between the transmittance and efficiency is studied in detail, and an impressive PCE of 8.38% with an AVT of 25.7% is obtained, which is an outstanding value in the semitransparent OSCs.
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| 3. |
- Cui, Yong, et al.
(författare)
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Over 16% efficiency organic photovoltaic cells enabled by a chlorinated acceptor with increased open-circuit voltages
- 2019
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Ingår i: Nature Communications. - : NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP. - 2041-1723. ; 10
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Broadening the optical absorption of organic photovoltaic (OPV) materials by enhancing the intramolecular push-pull effect is a general and effective method to improve the power conversion efficiencies of OPV cells. However, in terms of the electron acceptors, the most common molecular design strategy of halogenation usually results in down-shifted molecular energy levels, thereby leading to decreased open-circuit voltages in the devices. Herein, we report a chlorinated non-fullerene acceptor, which exhibits an extended optical absorption and meanwhile displays a higher voltage than its fluorinated counterpart in the devices. This unexpected phenomenon can be ascribed to the reduced non-radiative energy loss (0.206 eV). Due to the simultaneously improved short-circuit current density and open-circuit voltage, a high efficiency of 16.5% is achieved. This study demonstrates that finely tuning the OPV materials to reduce the bandgap-voltage offset has great potential for boosting the efficiency.
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| 4. |
- Cui, Yong, et al.
(författare)
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Single-Junction Organic Photovoltaic Cells with Approaching 18% Efficiency
- 2020
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Ingår i: Advanced Materials. - : WILEY-V C H VERLAG GMBH. - 0935-9648 .- 1521-4095. ; 32:19
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Optimizing the molecular structures of organic photovoltaic (OPV) materials is one of the most effective methods to boost power conversion efficiencies (PCEs). For an excellent molecular system with a certain conjugated skeleton, fine tuning the alky chains is of considerable significance to fully explore its photovoltaic potential. In this work, the optimization of alkyl chains is performed on a chlorinated nonfullerene acceptor (NFA) named BTP-4Cl-BO (a Y6 derivative) and very impressive photovoltaic parameters in OPV cells are obtained. To get more ordered intermolecular packing, the n-undecyl is shortened at the edge of BTP-eC11 to n-nonyl and n-heptyl. As a result, the NFAs of BTP-eC9 and BTP-eC7 are synthesized. The BTP-eC7 shows relatively poor solubility and thus limits its application in device fabrication. Fortunately, the BTP-eC9 possesses good solubility and, at the same time, enhanced electron transport property than BTP-eC11. Significantly, due to the simultaneously enhanced short-circuit current density and fill factor, the BTP-eC9-based single-junction OPV cells record a maximum PCE of 17.8% and get a certified value of 17.3%. These results demonstrate that minimizing the alkyl chains to get suitable solubility and enhanced intermolecular packing has a great potential in further improving its photovoltaic performance.
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| 5. |
- Cui, Yong, et al.
(författare)
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Wide-gap non-fullerene acceptor enabling high-performance organic photovoltaic cells for indoor applications
- 2019
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Ingår i: NATURE ENERGY. - : NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP. - 2058-7546. ; 4:9, s. 768-775
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Organic photovoltaic cells are potential candidates to drive low power consumption off-grid electronics for indoor applications. However, their power conversion efficiency is still limited by relatively large losses in the open-circuit voltage and a non-optimal absorption spectrum for indoor illumination. Here, we carefully designed a non-fullerene acceptor named IO-4CI and blend it with a polymer donor named PBDB-TF to obtain a photoactive layer whose absorption spectrum matches that of indoor light sources. The photovoltaic characterizations reveal a low energy loss below 0.60 eV. As a result, the organic photovoltaic cell (1 cm(2)) shows a power conversion efficiency of 26.1% with an open-circuit voltage of 1.10 V under a light-emitting diode illumination of 1,000 lux (2,700 K). We also fabricated a large-area cell (4 cm(2)) through the blade-coating method. Our cell shows an excellent stability, maintaining its initial photovoltaic performance under continuous illumination of the indoor light source for 1,000 hours.
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| 6. |
- Qian, Deping, et al.
(författare)
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Design rules for minimizing voltage losses in high-efficiency organic solar cells
- 2018
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Ingår i: Nature Materials. - : NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP. - 1476-1122 .- 1476-4660. ; 17:8, s. 703-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The open-circuit voltage of organic solar cells is usually lower than the values achieved in inorganic or perovskite photovoltaic devices with comparable bandgaps. Energy losses during charge separation at the donor-acceptor interface and non-radiative recombination are among the main causes of such voltage losses. Here we combine spectroscopic and quantum-chemistry approaches to identify key rules for minimizing voltage losses: (1) a low energy offset between donor and acceptor molecular states and (2) high photoluminescence yield of the low-gap material in the blend. Following these rules, we present a range of existing and new donor-acceptor systems that combine efficient photocurrent generation with electroluminescence yield up to 0.03%, leading to non-radiative voltage losses as small as 0.21 V. This study provides a rationale to explain and further improve the performance of recently demonstrated high-open-circuit-voltage organic solar cells.
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| 7. |
- Wu, Jinming, et al.
(författare)
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Performance analysis of solo Duck wave energy converter arrays under motion constraints
- 2017
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Ingår i: Energy. - : Elsevier BV. - 0360-5442 .- 1873-6785. ; 139, s. 155-169
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper studies the power capture performance of solo Duck wave energy converter (WEC) arrays. The barrier function method combined with a quasi-Newton BFGS optimization algorithm is applied to find the maximum captured power of the array when the Ducks are under motion constraints. Based on this optimized maximum captured power, the effects of separation distance, wave period, incident wave direction and Duck width on the array performance are investigated. For the two Ducks array, results show that the alternative constructive and destructive interaction stripes in the contour plot of the q-factor variation with non-dimensional separation distance are resulted from the diffracted wave pattern from each Duck, and the hydrodynamic interaction strength is reduced when constraints affect the performance. For the three Ducks array, the middle Duck shows larger variability of captured power than the side Ducks due to experiencing double in phase diffracted wave from the side ones. The captured power of the solo Duck WEC array is sensitive to incident wave direction, and arrays with Ducks of smaller width are found to have better performance in power capture efficiency.
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| 8. |
- Yao, Huifeng, et al.
(författare)
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14.7% Efficiency Organic Photovoltaic Cells Enabled by Active Materials with a Large Electrostatic Potential Difference
- 2019
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Ingår i: Journal of the American Chemical Society. - : American Chemical Society (ACS). - 0002-7863 .- 1520-5126. ; 141:19, s. 7743-7750
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Although significant improvements have been achieved for organic photovoltaic cells (OPVs), the top-performing devices still show power conversion efficiencies far behind those of commercialized solar cells. One of the main reasons is the large driving force required for separating electron-hole pairs. Here, we demonstrate an efficiency of 14.7% in the single-junction OPV by using a new polymer donor PTO2 and a nonfullerene acceptor IT-4F. The device possesses an efficient charge generation at a low driving force. Ultrafast transient absorption measurements probe the formation of loosely bound charge pairs with extended lifetime that impedes the recombination of charge carriers in the blend. The theoretical studies reveal that the molecular electrostatic potential (ESP) between PTO2 and IT-4F is large, and the induced intermolecular electric field may assist the charge generation. The results suggest OPVs have the potential for further improvement by judicious modulation of ESP.
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| 9. |
- Yao, Huifeng, et al.
(författare)
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Critical Role of Molecular Electrostatic Potential on Charge Generation in Organic Solar Cells
- 2018
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Ingår i: Chinese journal of chemistry. - : WILEY-V C H VERLAG GMBH. - 1001-604X .- 1614-7065. ; 36:6, s. 491-494
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Revealing the charge generation is a crucial step to understand the organic photovoltaics. Recent development in non-fullerene organic solar cells (OSCs) indicates efficient charge separation even with negligible energetic offset between the donor and acceptor materials. These new findings trigger a critical question concerning the charge separation mechanism in OSCs, traditionally believed to result from sufficient energetic offset between the polymer donor and fullerene acceptor. We propose a new mechanism, which involves the molecular electrostatic potential, to explain efficient charge separation in non-fullerene OSCs. Together with the new mechanism, we demonstrate a record efficiency of similar to 12% for systems with negligible energetic offset between donor and acceptor materials. Our analysis also rationalizes different requirement of the energetic offset between fullerene-based and non-fullerene OSCs, and paves the way for further design of OSC materials with both high photocurrent and high photovoltage at the same time.
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| 10. |
- Zhang, Yun, et al.
(författare)
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Fluorination vs. chlorination: a case study on high performance organic photovoltaic materials
- 2018
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Ingår i: Science in China Series B. - : SCIENCE PRESS. - 1674-7291 .- 1869-1870. ; 61:10, s. 1328-1337
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Halogenation is a very efficient chemical modification method to tune the molecular energy levels, absorption spectra and molecular packing of organic semiconductors. Recently, in the field of organic solar cells (OSCs), both fluorine- and chlorinesubstituted photovoltaic materials, including donors and acceptors, demonstrated their great potentials in achieving high power conversion efficiencies (PCEs), raising a question that how to make a decision between fluorination and chlorination when designing materials. Herein, we systemically studied the impact of fluorination and chlorination on the properties of resulting donors (PBDB-T-2F and PBDB-T-2Cl) and acceptors (IT-4F and IT-4Cl). The results suggest that all the OSCs based on different donor and acceptor combinations can deliver good PCEs around 13%-14%. Chlorination is more effective than fluorination in downshifting the molecular energy levels and broadening the absorption spectra. The influence of chlorination and fluorination on the crystallinity of the resulting materials is dependent on their introduction positions. As chlorination has the advantage of easy synthesis, it is more attractive in designing low-cost photovoltaic materials and therefore may have more potential in largescale applications.
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