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Enhancing photostability and power conversion efficiency of organic solar cells by a “sunscreen” ternary strategy

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Abstract

The field has witnessed the rapid growth in the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of organic solar cells (OSCs) over the past decade, reaching the threshold for practical commercialization. However, a major issue remains that OSC lifetimes are seriously limited by the ultraviolet (UV)-induced photodegradation. Here, inspired by the superior photostability of car paint under sunlight and ambient air, a “sunscreen” molecule, 2-(2-hydroxy-5-tert-octylphenyl)benzotriazole (UV329), is used to construct the PM6:Y6 ternary device. The addition of UV329 mainly enhances the ordered stacking of PM6 and increases the light utilization of blend films with the improved crystallization and appropriate phase separation. Accordingly, the ternary device exhibits stronger light response and obviously higher and more balanced carrier mobilities, contributing to higher short-circuit current density, fill factor and PCE. Similar PCE boost is also verified in PM6:BTP-eC9 and PM6:L8-BO systems. The photodegradation of PM6 dominates the photo-degradation process of PM6:Y6 systems, while the UV329 can effectively suppress such degradation, and thus the ternary device can retain nearly 90% of the initial PCE under continuous illumination for 120 min. Moreover, ternary devices also preserve better thermal stability and shelf-life with the enhanced PCE. This work provides a simple yet effective strategy for simultaneously improving PCE and photostability of OSCs.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51973032, 21905043, 51833004, 21875182), “Chenguang Program” supported by Shanghai Education Development Foundation and Shanghai Municipal Education Commission (19CG36), the Jiangxi Provincial Natural Science Foundation (20212ACB203005, 20224ACB214002, 20212BAB213018, 20224BAB203015), the Thousand Talents Plan of Jiangxi Province (jxsq2019101051) and the Jiangxi Provincial Education Department Science and Technology Research Foundation (GJJ210310). Y. C. expresses thanks for the support from the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities and Graduate Student Innovation Fund of Donghua University (CUSF-DH-D-2021008). X-ray data was acquired at beamlines 7.3.3 at the Advanced Light Source, which is supported by the Director, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231. The authors thank Chenhui Zhu at beamline 7.3.3 for assistance with data acquisition.

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  1. These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory for Modification of Chemical Fibers and Polymer Materials & College of Materials Science and Engineering, Donghua University, Shanghai, 201620, China

    Yongjie Cui, Xunfan Liao & Yiwang Chen

  2. National Engineering Research Center for Carbohydrate Synthesis/Key Lab of Fluorine and Silicon for Energy Materials and Chemistry of Ministry of Education, Jiangxi Normal University, Nanchang, 330022, China

    Yongjie Cui, Peipei Zhu, Xunfan Liao & Yiwang Chen

  3. Center for Chemistry of High-Performance and Novel Materials, Department of Chemistry, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, China

    Zeng Chen & Haiming Zhu

  4. State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710049, China

    Wei Ma

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  1. Yongjie Cui
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Correspondence to Xunfan Liao or Yiwang Chen.

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The supporting information is available online at chem.scichina.com and link.springer.com/journal/11426. The supporting materials are published as submitted, without typesetting or editing. The responsibility for scientific accuracy and content remains entirely with the authors.

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Cui, Y., Chen, Z., Zhu, P. et al. Enhancing photostability and power conversion efficiency of organic solar cells by a “sunscreen” ternary strategy. Sci. China Chem. 66, 1179–1189 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11426-022-1517-2

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