Department of Chemistry, Energy Institute and Hong Kong Branch of Chinese National Engineering Research Center for Tissue Restoration and Reconstruction, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology , Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
HKUST-Shenzhen Research Institute , No. 9 Yuexing first Road, Hi-tech Park, Nanshan, Shenzhen 518057, China.
Acc Chem Res. 2017 Oct 17;50(10):2519-2528. doi: 10.1021/acs.accounts.7b00293. Epub 2017 Sep 15.
Bulk heterojunction (BHJ) organic solar cells (OSCs) have attracted intensive research attention over the past two decades owing to their unique advantages including mechanical flexibility, light weight, large area, and low-cost fabrications. To date, OSC devices have achieved power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) exceeding 12%. Much of the progress was enabled by the development of high-performance donor polymers with favorable morphological, electronic, and optical properties. A key problem in morphology control of OSCs is the trade-off between achieving small domain size and high polymer crystallinity, which is especially important for the realization of efficient thick-film devices with high fill factors. For example, the thickness of OSC blends containing state-of-the-art PTB7 family donor polymers are restricted to ∼100 nm due to their relatively low hole mobility and impure polymer domains. To further improve the device performance and promote commercialization of OSCs, there is a strong demand for the design of new donor polymers that can achieve an optimal blend morphology containing highly crystalline yet reasonably small domains. In this Account, we highlight recent progress on a new family of conjugated polymers with strong temperature-dependent aggregation (TDA) property. These polymers are mostly disaggregated and can be easily dissolved in solution at high temperatures, yet they can strongly aggregate when the solution is cooled to room temperature. This unique aggregation property allows us to control the disorder-order transition of the polymer during solution processing. By preheating the solution to high temperature (∼100 °C), the polymer chains are mostly disaggregated before spin coating; as the temperature of the solution drops during the spin coating process, the polymer can strongly aggregate and form crystalline domains yet that are not excessivelylarge. The overall blend morphology can be optimized by various processing conditions (e.g., temperature, spin-rates, concentration, etc.). This well-controlled and near-optimal BHJ morphology produced over a dozen cases of efficient OSCs with an active layer nearly 300 nm thick that can still achieve high FFs (70-77%) and efficiencies (10-11.7%). By studying the structure-property relationships of the donor polymers, we show that the second position branched alkyl chains and the fluorination on the polymer backbone are two key structural features that enable the strong TDA property. Our comparative studies also show that the TDA polymer family can be used to match with non-fullerene acceptors yielding OSCs with low voltage losses. The key difference between the empirical matching rules for fullerene and non-fullerene OSCs is that TDA polymers with slightly reduced crystallinity appear to match better with small molecular acceptors and yield higher OSC performances.
体异质结(BHJ)有机太阳能电池(OSC)因其独特的优势,包括机械柔韧性、重量轻、大面积和低成本制造,在过去二十年中引起了广泛的研究关注。迄今为止,OSC 器件的功率转换效率(PCE)已超过 12%。取得如此大的进展在很大程度上得益于具有良好形态、电子和光学性能的高性能给体聚合物的发展。OSC 形态控制的一个关键问题是在实现小的畴尺寸和高聚合物结晶度之间取得平衡,这对于实现具有高填充因子的高效厚膜器件尤为重要。例如,由于其相对较低的空穴迁移率和不纯的聚合物畴,含有最先进的 PTB7 家族给体聚合物的 OSC 混合物的厚度限制在约 100nm 以内。为了进一步提高器件性能并促进 OSC 的商业化,强烈需要设计能够实现含有高结晶度但合理小畴的最佳共混形态的新型给体聚合物。在本综述中,我们重点介绍了具有强温度依赖性聚集(TDA)特性的新型共轭聚合物家族的最新进展。这些聚合物在高温下大多解聚,并且可以很容易地在溶液中溶解,然而,当溶液冷却到室温时,它们会强烈聚集。这种独特的聚集特性使我们能够在溶液处理过程中控制聚合物的无序-有序转变。通过将溶液预热至高温(约 100°C),在旋涂前聚合物链大多解聚;随着旋涂过程中溶液温度的降低,聚合物可以强烈聚集并形成结晶畴,但不会过大。通过各种处理条件(例如温度、旋涂速率、浓度等)可以优化整体共混形态。在十几个活性层厚度接近 300nm 的高效 OSC 中,采用这种良好控制的近最佳 BHJ 形态,仍可实现高填充因子(70-77%)和效率(10-11.7%)。通过研究给体聚合物的结构-性能关系,我们表明,第二位置支化烷基链和聚合物主链上的氟化是实现强 TDA 特性的两个关键结构特征。我们的比较研究还表明,TDA 聚合物家族可用于与非富勒烯受体匹配,从而获得具有低电压损耗的 OSC。富勒烯和非富勒烯 OSC 的经验匹配规则的关键区别在于,结晶度略有降低的 TDA 聚合物似乎与小分子受体更好地匹配,并产生更高的 OSC 性能。