| 1. |
- Wang, Zhongqiang, et al.
(author)
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Realizing 18.03% efficiency and good junction characteristics in organic solar cells via hydrogen-bonding interaction between glucose and ZnO electron transport layers
- 2022
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In: Journal of Materials Chemistry A. - : Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). - 2050-7488 .- 2050-7496. ; 11:4, s. 1810-1816
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Electron transport layers (ETLs) with excellent electron extraction capability are essential for realizing high efficiency in organic solar cells (OSCs). A sol-gel-processed ZnO ETL is widely used in OSCs due to its high mobility and suitable work function. However, the existence of defects usually results in low photovoltaic performance during the operation of OSCs. In this work, glucose (Gl) was used to passivate free OH traps via hydrogen-bonding interaction and formed ZnO/Gl ETLs with ZnO, which exhibited improved electron extraction capability and reduced trap defect density. Thus, a champion efficiency of 18.03% was obtained in a PM6:Y6 light absorber-based cell, which is >11% higher than that of the reference cell (16.15%) with a pristine ZnO ETL. Impressive enhancements by >11% were also observed in different fullerene and non-fullerene light absorber-based cells relative to that of the reference cell. This study demonstrates a new strategy to design ETLs for realizing high efficiency in OSCs.
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| 2. |
- Li, Wei, et al.
(author)
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One-Step Synthesis of Precursor Oligomers for Organic Photovoltaics: A Comparative Study between Polymers and Small Molecules
- 2015
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In: ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces. - : American Chemical Society (ACS). - 1944-8244 .- 1944-8252. ; 7:49, s. 27106-27114
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Two series of oligomers TQ and rhodanine end-capped TQ-DR were synthesized using a facile one-step method. Their optical, electrical, and thermal properties and photovoltaic performances were systematically investigated and compared. The TQ series of oligomers were found to be amorphous, whereas the TQ-DR series are semicrystalline. For the TQ oligomers, the results obtained in solar cells show that as the chain length of the oligomers increases, an increase in power conversion efficiency (PCE) is obtained. However, when introducing 3-ethylrhodanine into the TQ oligomers as end groups, the PCE of the TQ-DR series of oligomers decreases as the chain length increases. Moreover, the TQ-DR series of oligomers give much higher performances compared to the original amorphous TQ series of oligomers owing to the improved extinction coefficient (epsilon) and crystallinity afforded by the rhodanine. In particular, the highly crystalline oligomer TQ5-DR, which has the shortest conjugation length shows a high hole mobility of 0.034 cm(2) V-1 s(-1) and a high PCE of 3.14%, which is the highest efficiency out of all of the six oligomers. The structure-property correlations for all of the oligomers and the TQ1 polymer demonstrate that structural control of enhanced intermolecular interactions and crystallinity is a key for small molecules/oligomers to achieve high mobilities, which is an essential requirement for use in OPVs.
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| 3. |
- Shi, Furong, et al.
(author)
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A Nitroxide Radical Conjugated Polymer as an Additive to Reduce Nonradiative Energy Loss in Organic Solar Cells
- 2023
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In: Advanced Materials. - : Wiley. - 0935-9648 .- 1521-4095. ; 35:23
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Nonfullerene-acceptor-based organic solar cells (NFA-OSCs) are now set off to the 20% power conversion efficiency milestone. To achieve this, minimizing all loss channels, including nonradiative photovoltage losses, seems a necessity. Nonradiative recombination, to a great extent, is known to be an inherent material property due to vibrationally induced decay of charge-transfer (CT) states or their back electron transfer to the triplet excitons. Herein, it is shown that the use of a new conjugated nitroxide radical polymer with 2,2,6,6-tetramethyl piperidine-1-oxyl side groups (GDTA) as an additive results in an improvement of the photovoltaic performance of NFA-OSCs based on different active layer materials. Upon the addition of GDTA, the open-circuit voltage (VOC), fill factor (FF), and short-circuit current density (JSC) improve simultaneously. This approach is applied to several material systems including state-of-the-art donor/acceptor pairs showing improvement from 15.8% to 17.6% (in the case of PM6:Y6) and from 17.5% to 18.3% (for PM6:BTP-eC9). Then, the possible reasons behind the observed improvements are discussed. The results point toward the suppression of the CT state to triplet excitons loss channel. This work presents a facile, promising, and generic approach to further improve the performance of NFA-OSCs.
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| 4. |
- Tang, Shi, et al.
(author)
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Aggregation-Induced Emission by Molecular Design: A Route to High-Performance Light-Emitting Electrochemical Cells
- 2023
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In: Angewandte Chemie - International Edition. - : Wiley. - 1433-7851 .- 1521-3773. ; 62:23
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The emission efficiency of organic semiconductors (OSCs) often suffers from aggregation caused quenching (ACQ). An elegant solution is aggregation-induced emission (AIE), which constitutes the design of the OSC so that its morphology inhibits quenching π–π interactions and non-radiative motional deactivation. The light-emitting electrochemical cell (LEC) can be sustainably fabricated, but its function depends on motion of bulky ions in proximity of the OSC. It is therefore questionable whether the AIE morphology can be retained during LEC operation. Here, we synthesize two structurally similar OSCs, which are distinguished by that 1 features ACQ while 2 delivers AIE. Interestingly, we find that the AIE-LEC significantly outperforms the ACQ-LEC. We rationalize our finding by showing that the AIE morphology remains intact during LEC operation, and that it can feature appropriately sized free-volume voids for facile ion transport and suppressed non-radiative excitonic deactivation.
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| 5. |
- Wang, Chuanfei, et al.
(author)
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Low Band Gap Polymer Solar Cells With Minimal Voltage Losses
- 2016
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In: Advanced Energy Materials. - : Wiley. - 1614-6832 .- 1614-6840. ; 6:18
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- One of the factors limiting the performance of organic solar cells (OSCs) is their large energy losses (E loss) in the conversion from photons to electrons, typically believed to be around 0.6 eV and often higher than those of inorganic solar cells. In this work, a novel low band gap polymer PIDTT-TID with a optical gap of 1.49 eV is synthesized and used as the donor combined with PC71BM in solar cells. These solar cells attain a good power conversion efficiency of 6.7% with a high open-circuit voltage of 1.0 V, leading to the E loss as low as 0.49 eV. A systematic study indicates that the driving force in this donor and acceptor system is sufficient for charge generation with the low E loss. This work pushes the minimal E loss of OSCs down to 0.49 eV, approaching the values of some inorganic and hybrid solar cells. It indicates the potential for further enhancement of the performance of OSCs by improving their V oc since the E loss can be minimized.
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| 6. |
- Wang, Chuanfei, et al.
(author)
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Ternary organic solar cells with enhanced open circuit voltage
- 2017
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In: Nano Energy. - : Elsevier BV. - 2211-2855 .- 2211-3282. ; 37, s. 24-31
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- By introducing a non-fullerene small molecule acceptor as a third component to typical polymer donor: fullerene acceptor binary solar cells, we demonstrate that the short circuit current density (Jsc), open circuit voltage (Voc), power conversion efficiency (PCE) and thermal stability can be enhanced simultaneously. The different surface energy of each component causes most of the non-fullerene acceptor molecules to self-organize at the polymer/fullerene interface, while the appropriately selected oxidation/reduction potential of the non-fullerene acceptor enables the resulting ternary junction to work through a cascade mechanism. The cascade ternary junction enhances charge generation through complementary absorption between the non-fullerene and fullerene acceptors and aids the efficient charge extraction from fullerene domains. The bimolecular recombination in the ternary blend layer is reduced as the ternary cascade junction increases the separation of holes and electrons during charge transportation and the trap assistant recombination induced by integer charge transfer (ICT) state potentially reduced due to the smaller pinning energy of inserted non-fullerene acceptor, leading to an unprecedented increase in the open circuit voltage beyond the binary reference values.
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| 7. |
- Cai, C. S., et al.
(author)
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Polymer solar cells spray coated with non-halogenated solvents
- 2017
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In: Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells. - : Elsevier BV. - 0927-0248. ; 161, s. 52-61
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Using spray-coating technique, we successfully fabricated conventional ITO-based and inverted ITO-free polymer solar cells (PSCs) based on a conjugated polymer poly[2,3-bis-(3-octyloxyphenyl) quinoxaline-5,8-diyl-alt-thiophene-2,5-diyl] (TQ1) as the donor and [6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PC61BM) or [6,6] -phenyl-C71-butyric acid methyl ester (PC71BM) as the acceptor. Environment-friendly non-halogenated solvents were used to process the active layers. The influence of substrate temperatures and processing solvents on the photovoltaic performance of the ITO-based TQ1:PC61BM PSCs was systemically investigated. A higher substrate temperature can accelerate the solvent evaporating rate and afford a micro-textured rougher surface, which efficiently reduced light reflectance and enhanced absorption. Furthermore, finer phase separation was observed when using this high substrate temperature, which led to enhanced photocurrent due to the reduced bimolecular recombination. The device performance of spray-processed PSCs using the non-halogenated solvent mixtures was comparable to that of spray-processed PSCs using the halogenated o-dichlorobenzene (oDCB), which demonstrates that the non-halogenated solvents are very promising in spray-processed PSCs. This work sheds new light on developing efficient roll-to-roll compatible spray-coated PSCs with environment-friendly solvents.
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| 8. |
- Chen, W., et al.
(author)
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Enhanced efficiency of polymer solar cells by improving molecular aggregation and broadening the absorption spectra
- 2019
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In: Dyes and Pigments. - : Elsevier BV. - 0143-7208 .- 1873-3743. ; 166, s. 42-48
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Alkylthio-substituted thiophene-based benzo[1,2-b:4,5-b’]dithiophene (BDT) was used to construct PBDTS-DTBT, a medium band gap donor-acceptor (D-A) polymer with 5,6-difluoro-4,7-bis[4-(2-octyldodecyl)thiophene-2-yl]benzo[c] [1,2,5]thiadiazole (DTBT). The incorporation of sulfur atoms into the side chains not only lowered the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) energy level but also improved molecular aggregation and thus afforded lower band gap (1.68 eV) with full width at half maximum (FWHM) of 170 nm in comparison to that of the analogous polymer (PBDT-DTBT) without sulfur atoms in side chains. Therefore, the bulk heterojunction polymer solar cells based on PBDTS-DTBT with 2% diiodooctane (DIO) as processing additive showed a high power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 9.73% with high open-circuit voltage (V OC , 0.93 V), large short-circuit current density (J SC , 14.23 mA/cm 2 ) and high fill factor (FF, 0.735).
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| 9. |
- Chen, W., et al.
(author)
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Revealing the Position Effect of an Alkylthio Side Chain in Phenyl-Substituted Benzodithiophene-Based Donor Polymers on the Photovoltaic Performance of Non-Fullerene Organic Solar Cells
- 2019
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In: ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. - : American Chemical Society (ACS). - 1944-8252 .- 1944-8244. ; 11:36, s. 33173-33178
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In this work, position effects of an alkylthio side chain were investigated by designing and synthesizing two copolymers based on a phenyl-substituted benzo[1,2-b:4,5-b′]dithiophene (BDTP) and difluorobenzotriazole (FTAZ). The polymer based on the meta-position-alkylthiolated BDTP, named m-PBDTPS-FTAZ, showed a relatively broader bandgap (2.00 vs 1.96 eV) and lower highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) energy level (-5.40 vs-5.32 eV) than its para-positioned structural isomeric analogue polymer (named p-PBDTPS-FTAZ), that is, m- A nd p-PBDTPS-FTAZ with the side chain structured as ethylhexyl-in the phenyl unit and hexyldecyl-in the FTAZ moiety. When blended with ITIC, m-PBDTPS-FTAZ showed a comparable crystallinity but more uniform morphology compared to that of p-PBDTPS-FTAZ. A high power conversion efficiency of 13.16% was achieved for m-PBDTPS-FTAZ:ITIC devices with a high open circuit voltage (VOC) of 0.95 V, which is higher than that of p-PBDTPS-FTAZ:ITIC devices (10.86%) with a VOC of 0.89 V. Therefore, m-BDTPS could be an effective donor unit to construct high-efficiency polymers due to its effectively decreased HOMO energy level of polymers while still maintaining good molecular stacking.
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| 10. |
- Dang, D. F., et al.
(author)
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Manipulating backbone structure with various conjugated spacers to enhance photovoltaic performance of D-A-type two-dimensional copolymerse
- 2014
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In: Organic Electronics: physics, materials, applications. - : Elsevier BV. - 1566-1199. ; 15:11, s. 2876-2884
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- A class of low band-gap two-dimensional conjugated polymers of PBDTT-FQ PBDTT-TQ PBDTT-BTQ and PBDTT-TTQ was designed and synthesized, which contains the same di(alkylthiophene)-substituted benzo[1,2-b:4,5-b']dithiophene (BDTT) and 6,7-difluoro-quinoxaline (Q) units, as well as various conjugated spacers of furan, thiophene, bithiophene and thieno[3,2-b]thiophene in the main chain. Significant effect of the varied spacers between the BDTT and Q units on the thermal, optical, electrochemical and photovoltaic properties was investigated and observed for these two-dimensional copolymers in the polymer solar cells. The maximum power conversion efficiency of 5.9% with a short circuit current of 13.7 mA/cm(2) and a fill factor of 0.56 was obtained for the PBDTT-TQ with thiophene spacer in the bulk hetero-junction PSCs using [6,6]-phenyl-C-71-butyric acid methyl ester as acceptor.
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