journal article·2025-03

Organic solar cells with 20.82% efficiency and high tolerance of active layer thickness through crystallization sequence manipulation

Haiyang Chen, Yuting Huang, Rui Zhang, Hongyu Mou, Junyuan Ding, Jiadong Zhou, Zukun Wang, Hongxiang Li, Weijie Chen, Juan Zhu, Qinrong Cheng, Hao Gu, Xiaoxiao Wu, Tianjiao Zhang, Yingyi Wang, Haiming Zhu, Zengqi Xie, Feng Gao, Yaowen Li, Yongfang Li

Nature Materials· Volume 24· Issue 3
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Abstract

Printing of large-area solar panels necessitates advanced organic solar cells with thick active layers. However, increasing the active layer thickness typically leads to a marked drop in the power conversion efficiency. Here we developed an organic semiconductor regulator, called AT-β2O, to tune the crystallization sequence of the components in active layers. When adding AT-β2O in the donor (D18-Cl) and acceptor (N3) blend, N3 crystallizes behind D18-Cl, and this phenomenon is different from the co-crystallization observed in binary D18-Cl:N3 blends. This manipulation of crystallization dynamics is favourable to form bulk-heterojunction-gradient vertical phase separation in the active layer accompanied by the high crystallinity of the acceptor and balanced charge carrier mobilities in thick films. The resultant single-junction organic solar cells exhibited a certified power conversion efficiency of over 20%, as well as demonstrated exceptional adaptability across the active layer thicknesses (100-400 nm) and remarkable universality. Such breakthroughs enable large-area modules with a certified power conversion efficiency of 18.04%.
Source: europepmc · Quality: candidate unverified · Source record ↗

Research context

OpenAlex topics: Organic Electronics and Photovoltaics · Perovskite Materials and Applications · Conducting polymers and applications

SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.

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