Small reorganization energy acceptors enable low energy losses in non-fullerene organic solar cells

Minimizing the energy loss is of critical importance in the pursuit of attaining high-performance organic solar cells (OSCs). Interestingly, electron-vibration coupling (namely reorganization energy) plays a crucial role in the photo-electric conversion processes. However, a molecular understanding of the relationship between the reorganization energy and the energy loss has rarely been studied. Here, two new acceptors Qx-1 and Qx-2 with quinoxaline (Qx)-containing fused core were designed and synthesized. The results indicate that the reorganization energies of these two acceptors during the photoelectric conversion processes are substantially smaller than the conventional Y6 acceptor, which is beneficial for improving the exciton lifetime and diffusion length, promoting charge transport and reducing the energy loss originating from exciton dissociation and non-radiative recombination. As a result, an outstanding power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 18.2% with high Voc above 0.93 V in the PM6:Qx-2 blend, accompanying a significantly reduced energy loss of 0.48 eV. To the best of our knowledge, the obtained energy loss is the smallest for the binary OSCs with PCEs over 16% reported to date. This work underlines the importance of the reorganization energy in achieving small energy loss in organic active materials and paves a new way to obtain high-performance OSCs.

Prolongation of the singlet exciton lifetime of nonfullerene acceptor films by the replacement of the central benzene core with naphthalene

The replacement of benzene with naphthalene in the central core of an acceptor achieved a longer singlet lifetime and a higher power conversion efficiency.

An Insight into the Excitation States of Small Molecular Semiconductor Y6

Y6 is a new type of non-fullerene acceptor, which has led to power conversion efficiencies of single-junction polymer solar cells over 17% when combined with a careful choice of polymeric donors. However, the excited state characteristics of Y6, which is closely correlated with its opto-electronic applications, are not clear yet. In this work, we studied the excited state properties of the Y6 solution and Y6 film, by using steady-state and time-resolved spectroscopies as well as time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) calculations. UV-Vis absorption and fluorescence simulation, natural transition orbitals (NTOs) and hole-electron distribution analysis of Y6 solution were performed for understanding the excitation properties of Y6 by using TD-DFT calculations. The lifetimes of the lowest singlet excited state in Y6 solution and film were estimated to be 0.98 and 0.8 ns, respectively. Combining the exciton lifetime and photoluminescence (PL) quantum yield, the intrinsic radiative decay lifetimes of Y6 in the solution and film were estimated, which were 1.3 and 10.5 ns for the Y6 solution and film, respectively. Long exciton lifetime (~0.8 ns) and intrinsic radiative decay lifetime (~10.5 ns) of Y6 film enable Y6 to be a good acceptor material for the application of polymer solar cells.