Constructing High-Performance Solar Cells by Incorporating an A1-A2-Type Polymer Donor as a Guest Material

Abstract

Owing to the intramolecular push-pull electron effect between the electron donor (D) unit and electron acceptor (A) unit, the D-A type based polymer donors display outstanding device performance. However, the imperfect energy levels lead to the D-A-type-based polymer device exhibiting high voltage loss. In this study, an A1-A2-type copolymer M1 was developed with 1,3-bis(2-ethylhexyl)-5,7-di(thiophen-2-yl)benzo[1,2-c:4,5-c']dithiophene-4,8-dione (BDD) as the A1 unit and dithieno[3 ',2 ':3,4;2 '',3 '':5,6]benzo[1,2-c][1,2,5]thiadiazole (DTBT) as the A2 unit. Compared with D-A-type-based polymer donor PM6, the A1-A2 type based M1 possesses lower energy levels, broader absorption, and stronger crystallinity. After introducing M1 to the PM6:L8-BO-based system as the guest material, the ternary blend films exhibited exceptional face-on molecular orientation and favorable active-layer morphology, which promotes exciton dissociation and suppresses charge recombination. Consequently, the PM6:M1(5%):L8-BO-based ternary device exhibited an impressive power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 19.70% with simultaneously enhanced photostability, which is superior to the PM6:L8-BO-based binary system. Our work offers an efficient approach to developing high-performance ternary devices by introducing a novel A1-A2 type polymer donors as the guest material.