Silicon Phthalocyanines as Acceptor Candidates in Mixed Solution/Evaporation Processed Planar Heterojunction Organic Photovoltaic Devices

Silicon phthalocyanines (SiPc) are showing promise as both ternary additives and non-fullerene acceptors in organic photovoltaics (OPVs) as a result of their ease of synthesis, chemical stability and strong absorption. In this study, bis(3,4,5-trifluorophenoxy) silicon phthalocyanine ((345F)2-SiPc)) and bis(2,4,6-trifluorophenoxy) silicon phthalocyanine ((246F)2-SiPc)) are employed as acceptors in mixed solution/evaporation planar heterojunction (PHJ) devices. The donor layer, either poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) or poly[N-9′-heptadecanyl-2,7-carbazole-alt-5,5-(4′,7′-di-2-thienyl-2′,1′,3′-benzothiadiazole)] (PCDTBT), was spin coated followed by the evaporation of the SiPc acceptor thin film. Several different donor/acceptor combinations were investigated in addition to investigations to determine the effect of film thickness on device performance. Finally, the effects of annealing, prior to SiPc deposition, after SiPc deposition, and during SiPc deposition were also investigated. The devices which performed the best were obtained using PCDTBT as the donor, with a 90 nm film of (345F)2-SiPc as the acceptor, followed by thermal annealing at 150 °C for 30 min of the entire mixed solution/evaporation device. An open-circuit voltage (Voc) of 0.88 V and a fill factor (FF) of 0.52 were achieved leading to devices that outperformed corresponding fullerene-based PHJ devices.