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Status and prospects for ternary organic photovoltaics

Nature Photonics volume 9, pages 491–500 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

In the past few years, ternary organic solar cells (OSCs) featuring multiple donor or acceptor materials in the active layer have emerged as a promising structure to simultaneously improve all solar cell parameters compared with traditional binary OSCs. Power conversion efficiencies around 10% have been achieved for conjugated polymers in a ternary structure, showing the great potential of ternary systems. In this review, we summarize progress in developing ternary OSCs and discuss many of the designs, chemistries and mechanisms that have been investigated. We conclude by highlighting the challenges and future directions for further development in the field of ternary blend OSCs.

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Figure 1: Structures of different PSCs.
Figure 2
Figure 3: Operating mechanism of ternary blend PSCs.
Figure 4: J–V curves of representative ternary PSCs.
Figure 5: Morphology and VOC changes for ternary PSCs.

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Acknowledgements

L. L. and L.Y. gratefully acknowledge financial support from US National Science Foundation (grants NSF CHE-1229089 and DMR-1263006), US Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the NIST CHiMaD program. M.A.K. and W.Y. were supported by a National Science Foundation CAREER award (DMR-0954280) and the Office of Naval Research (grant N000141410221).

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  1. Department of Chemistry and the James Franck Institute, University of Chicago, 929 East 57th Street, Chicago, 60637, Illinois, USA

    Luyao Lu & Luping Yu

  2. Department of Chemistry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, 27599-3290, North Carolina, USA

    Mary Allison Kelly & Wei You

  3. Department of Applied Physical Sciences, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 27599-3216, North Carolina, USA

    Wei You

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Lu, L., Kelly, M., You, W. et al. Status and prospects for ternary organic photovoltaics. Nature Photon 9, 491–500 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2015.128

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