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Nano Research Energy 2024, 3: e9120088 https://doi.org/10.26599/NRE.2023.9120088
Research Article | Open Access | Issue | Published: 24 July 2023

Polymer donors with hydrophilic side-chains enabling efficient and thermally-stable polymer solar cells by non-halogenated solvent processing

Show Author's Information Soodeok Seo1,§,  Jun-Young Park2,§,  Jin Su Park1,§,  Seungjin Lee3,  Do-Yeong Choi2,  Yun-Hi Kim4( ),  Bumjoon J. Kim1( )
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon 34141, Republic of Korea
Department of Materials Engineering and Convergence Technology and ERI, Gyeongsang National University, Jinju 52828, Republic of Korea
Advanced Energy Materials Research Center, Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT), Daejeon 34114, Republic of Korea
Department of Chemistry and ERI, Gyeongsang National University, Jinju 52828, Republic of Korea

§ Soodeok Seo and Jun-Young Park and Jin Su Park contributed equally to this work.

Keywords:
polymer solar cell, polymer donor, OEG side-chain, non-halogenated solvent process, side-chain engineering
Cite this article:
Seo S, Park J-Y, Park JS, et al. Polymer donors with hydrophilic side-chains enabling efficient and thermally-stable polymer solar cells by non-halogenated solvent processing. Nano Research Energy, 2024, 3: e9120088. https://doi.org/10.26599/NRE.2023.9120088
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Abstract Full text Electronic supplementary material About this article

Polymer solar cells (PSCs) with high power conversion efficiency (PCE) and environment-friendly fabrication are the main requirements enabling their production in industrial scale. While the use of non-halogenated solvent processing is inevitable for the PSC fabrication, it significantly reduces the processability of polymer donors (PDS) and small-molecule acceptors (SMAs). This often results in unoptimized blend morphology and limits the device performance. To address this issue, hydrophilic oligoethylene glycol (OEG) side-chains are introduced into a PD (2EG) to enhance the molecular compatibility between the PD and L8-BO SMA. The 2EG PD induces higher crystallinity and alleviates phase separation with the SMA compared to the reference PD (PM7) with hydrocarbon side-chains. Consequently, the 2EG-based PSCs exhibit a higher PCE (15.8%) than the PM7-based PSCs (PCE = 14.4%) in the ortho-xylene based processing. Importantly, benefitted from the reduced phase separation and increased crystallinity of 2EG PDS, the 2EG-based PSCs show enhanced thermal stability (84% of initial PCE after 120 h heating) compared to that of the PM7-based PSCs (60% of initial PCE after 120 h heating). This study demonstrates the potential of OEG side-chain-incorporated materials in developing efficient, stable, and eco-friendly PSCs.


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Electronic supplementary material
About this article

Polymer donors with hydrophilic side-chains enabling efficient and thermally-stable polymer solar cells by non-halogenated solvent processing

Show Author's information Soodeok Seo1,§, Jun-Young Park2,§, Jin Su Park1,§, Seungjin Lee3, Do-Yeong Choi2, Yun-Hi Kim4( ), Bumjoon J. Kim1( )
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon 34141, Republic of Korea
Department of Materials Engineering and Convergence Technology and ERI, Gyeongsang National University, Jinju 52828, Republic of Korea
Advanced Energy Materials Research Center, Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT), Daejeon 34114, Republic of Korea
Department of Chemistry and ERI, Gyeongsang National University, Jinju 52828, Republic of Korea

§ Soodeok Seo and Jun-Young Park and Jin Su Park contributed equally to this work.

Abstract

Polymer solar cells (PSCs) with high power conversion efficiency (PCE) and environment-friendly fabrication are the main requirements enabling their production in industrial scale. While the use of non-halogenated solvent processing is inevitable for the PSC fabrication, it significantly reduces the processability of polymer donors (PDS) and small-molecule acceptors (SMAs). This often results in unoptimized blend morphology and limits the device performance. To address this issue, hydrophilic oligoethylene glycol (OEG) side-chains are introduced into a PD (2EG) to enhance the molecular compatibility between the PD and L8-BO SMA. The 2EG PD induces higher crystallinity and alleviates phase separation with the SMA compared to the reference PD (PM7) with hydrocarbon side-chains. Consequently, the 2EG-based PSCs exhibit a higher PCE (15.8%) than the PM7-based PSCs (PCE = 14.4%) in the ortho-xylene based processing. Importantly, benefitted from the reduced phase separation and increased crystallinity of 2EG PDS, the 2EG-based PSCs show enhanced thermal stability (84% of initial PCE after 120 h heating) compared to that of the PM7-based PSCs (60% of initial PCE after 120 h heating). This study demonstrates the potential of OEG side-chain-incorporated materials in developing efficient, stable, and eco-friendly PSCs.

Keywords: polymer solar cell, polymer donor, OEG side-chain, non-halogenated solvent process, side-chain engineering

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Publication history
Copyright
Acknowledgements
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Publication history

Received: 06 June 2023
Revised: 29 June 2023
Accepted: 05 July 2023
Published: 24 July 2023
Issue date: March 2024

Copyright

© The Author(s) 2023. Published by Tsinghua University Press.

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

This work was also supported by Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning (KETEP) grant (20214000000650) and National Research Foundation (NRF) grant (2022R1A2B5B03001761) funded by the Korea government.

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The articles published in this open access journal are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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