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Side-chain modification of polyethylene glycol on conjugated polymers for ternary blend all-polymer solar cells with efficiency up to 9.27%

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Abstract

With the rapid progress achieved by all-polymer solar cells (all-PSCs), wide-bandgap copolymers have attracted intensive attention for their unique advantage of constructing complementary absorption profiles with conventional narrow-bandgap copolymers. In this work, we designed and synthesized a wide bandgap ternary copolymer PEG-2% which has the benzodithiophene-alt-difluorobenzotriazole as the backbone and the polyethylene glycol (PEG) modified side chain. The PBTA-PEG-2%:N2200 can be processed with a non-chlorinated solvent of 2-methyl-tetrahydrofuran (MeTHF) for the binary all-PSC, which exhibits a moderate photovoltaic performance. In particular, the ternary all-PSCs that consisting an additional narrow bandgap polymer donor PTB7-Th can also be processed with MeTHF, resulting in an unprecedented power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 9.27%, and a high PCE of 8.05% can be achieved with active layer thickness of 240 nm, both of which are the highest values so far reported from all-PSCs. Detailed investigations revealed that the dramatically improved device performances are attributable to the well-extended absorption band in the photoactive layer. Hence, developing novel copolymers with tailored side chains, and introducing additional polymeric components, can broaden the horizon for high-performance all-PSCs.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51673069, 91633301, 51521002, 21520102006), Guangdong Natural Science Foundation (2017A030306011), the Pearl River S&T Nova Program of Guangzhou (201710010021), and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities.

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  1. These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Polymer Optoelectronic Materials and Devices, State Key Laboratory of Luminescent Materials and Devices, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510640, China

    Zhenye Li, Baobing Fan, Baitian He, Lei Ying, Wenkai Zhong, Fei Huang & Yong Cao

  2. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China

    Feng Liu

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  1. Zhenye Li
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  2. Baobing Fan
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  3. Baitian He
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  4. Lei Ying
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  5. Wenkai Zhong
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  6. Feng Liu
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  7. Fei Huang
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Correspondence to Lei Ying or Fei Huang.

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11426_2017_9188_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

Side-chain modification of polyethylene glycol on conjugated polymers for ternary blend all-polymer solar cells with efficiency up to 9.27%.

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Li, Z., Fan, B., He, B. et al. Side-chain modification of polyethylene glycol on conjugated polymers for ternary blend all-polymer solar cells with efficiency up to 9.27%. Sci. China Chem. 61, 427–436 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11426-017-9188-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11426-017-9188-7

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