Selenophene-Containing Small-Molecule Donor with a Medium Band Gap Enables High-Efficiency Ternary Organic Solar Cells

To construct efficient donor:donor:acceptor (D 1:D 2:A)-type ternary devices, two new selenophene-containing small-molecule (SM) donors named FSBTSeEHR and FSBTSeHR have been designed and synthesized that show broader and red-shifted absorption spectra than the thiophene analogues. With the introduction of SM donors into the D18:CH-6F host system, enhanced light harvesting and charge transport were achieved, benefiting from more complementary absorptions and cascaded energy levels. Furthermore, the doping of the SM donor could effectively modulate the micromorphology and enable a more suitable phase separation size in the active layer. After systematic optimization, the FSBTSeEHR-based ternary organic solar cell (TOSC) exhibited an excellent power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 18.02% with a high open-circuit voltage ( V oc ) of 0.905 V, short-circuit current density ( J sc ) of 26.41 mA cm –2, and fill factor (FF) of 0.754. By contrast, the FSBTSeHR counterpart showed a superior efficiency of 18.55% due to the higher J sc (26.91 mA cm –2 ) and FF (0.761). The outstanding PCEs of D 1:D 2:A-type TOSCs based on our SM donors, FSBTSeEHR and FSBTSeHR, are significantly higher than those of the corresponding binary host system (16.86%) and among the highest values reported to date. This work demonstrates that D 1:D 2:A-type TOSCs have tremendous potential to achieve superior performances through elaborate design of the SM donor guest and reasonable combination of D and A ingredients.