journal article·2023-06Open access

A Nitroxide Radical Conjugated Polymer as an Additive to Reduce Nonradiative Energy Loss in Organic Solar Cells

Furong Shi, Pengzhi Guo, Xianfeng Qiao, Guo Yao, Tao Zhang, Qi Lu, Qian Wang, Xiaofeng Wang, Jasurbek Rikhsibaev, Ergang Wang, Chunfeng Zhang, Young‐Wan Kwon, Han Young Woo, Hongbin Wu, Jianhui Hou, Dongge Ma, Ardalan Armin, Yuguang Ma, Yangjun Xia

Advanced Materials· Volume 35· Issue 23

Abstract

Abstract Nonfullerene‐acceptor‐based organic solar cells (NFA‐OSCs) are now set off to the 20% power conversion efficiency milestone. To achieve this, minimizing all loss channels, including nonradiative photovoltage losses, seems a necessity. Nonradiative recombination, to a great extent, is known to be an inherent material property due to vibrationally induced decay of charge‐transfer (CT) states or their back electron transfer to the triplet excitons. Herein, it is shown that the use of a new conjugated nitroxide radical polymer with 2,2,6,6‐tetramethyl piperidine‐1‐oxyl side groups (GDTA) as an additive results in an improvement of the photovoltaic performance of NFA‐OSCs based on different active layer materials. Upon the addition of GDTA, the open‐circuit voltage (VOC), fill factor (FF), and short‐circuit current density (JSC) improve simultaneously. This approach is applied to several material systems including state‐of‐the‐art donor/acceptor pairs showing improvement from 15.8% to 17.6% (in the case of PM6:Y6) and from 17.5% to 18.3% (for PM6:BTP‐eC9). Then, the possible reasons behind the observed improvements are discussed. The results point toward the suppression of the CT state to triplet excitons loss channel. This work presents a facile, promising, and generic approach to further improve the performance of NFA‐OSCs.
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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.

Affiliations

Organic Semiconductor Materials and Applied Technology Research Centre of Gansu Province School of Materials Science and Engineering Lanzhou Jiaotong University Lanzhou 730070 P. R. China

National Green Coating Equipment and Technology Research Centre Lanzhou Jiaotong University Lanzhou 730070 P. R. China

State Key Laboratory of Luminescent Materials and Devices South China University of Technology Guangzhou 510640 P. R. China

National Laboratory of Solid‐State Microstructures School of Physics and Collaborative Innovation Center for Advanced Microstructures Nanjing University Nanjing 210093 P. R. China

State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences CAS Research/Education Center for Excellence in Molecular Sciences Institute of Chemistry Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing 100190 P. R. China

Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Chalmers University of Technology Göteborg SE‐412 96 Sweden

Department of Chemistry KU‐KIST Graduate School of Converging Science and Technology Korea University Seoul 02841 Republic of Korea

Sustainable Advanced Materials (Sêr SAM) Department of Physics Swansea University Singleton Park Swansea SA2 8PP UK

Funding

National Research Foundation of Korea

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