Issue 5, 2019

Towards improved efficiency of polymer solar cells via chlorination of a benzo[1,2-b:4,5-b′]dithiophene based polymer donor

Abstract

A chlorine substituted benzo[1,2-b:4,5-b′]dithiophene unit based conjugated polymer, PBT-Cl, is designed and synthesized as a donor material for high-performance polymer solar cells (PSCs). Relative to its fluorine substituted counterpart PBT-F, PBT-Cl has a simple synthetic procedure, slightly blue-shifted absorption spectrum, and lower-lying HOMO level. Importantly, the PSC based on PBT-Cl : IT-4F showed higher charge carrier mobility with a more balanced μh/μe ratio, weaker bimolecular recombination, and suppressed trap-assisted recombination than the PBT-F : IT-4F based device, leading to a significantly higher power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 11.60%. Notably, the high PCE of 11.60% was obtained from the PBT-Cl based device processed using m-xylene solvent. What is more, a PBT-Cl based semitransparent PSC demonstrated a promising PCE of 8.18%, with a high AVT of 31.7%. These results demonstrate that the replacement of the fluorine atom by the chlorine atom should be an efficient strategy for designing high-performance polymer donor materials.

Graphical abstract: Towards improved efficiency of polymer solar cells via chlorination of a benzo[1,2-b:4,5-b′]dithiophene based polymer donor

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
13 Nov 2018
Accepted
21 Dec 2018
First published
24 Dec 2018

J. Mater. Chem. A, 2019,7, 2261-2267

Towards improved efficiency of polymer solar cells via chlorination of a benzo[1,2-b:4,5-b′]dithiophene based polymer donor

Y. Dong, H. Yang, Y. Wu, Y. Zou, J. Yuan, C. Cui and Y. Li, J. Mater. Chem. A, 2019, 7, 2261 DOI: 10.1039/C8TA10923K

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