Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

A guest-assisted molecular-organization approach for >17% efficiency organic solar cells using environmentally friendly solvents

Nature Energy volume 6, pages 1045–1053 (2021)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

The power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) of laboratory-sized organic solar cells (OSCs), usually processed from low-boiling-point and toxic solvents, have reached high values of over 18%. However, there is usually a notable drop of the PCEs when green solvents are used, limiting practical development of OSCs. Herein, we obtain certificated PCEs over 17% in OSCs processed from a green solvent paraxylene (PX) by a guest-assisted assembly strategy, where a third component (guest) is employed to manipulate the molecular interaction of the binary blend. In addition, the high-boiling-point green solvent PX also enables us to deposit a uniform large-area module (36 cm2) with a high efficiency of over 14%. The strong molecular interaction between the host and guest molecules also enhances the operational stability of the devices. Our guest-assisted assembly strategy provides a unique approach to develop large-area and high-efficiency OSCs processed from green solvents, paving the way for industrial development of OSCs.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Chemical structures and structural characterization of the acceptors.
Fig. 2: Blend film crystalline properties and intra- and intermolecular interactions between Y6 and BTO.
Fig. 3: Schematic illustration of BTO-enabling formation of highly crystalline Y6 from high-boiling-point solvents.
Fig. 4: Photovoltaic performance of the devices.
Fig. 5: Non-halogenated solvent-processed module and device stability.

Data availability

The authors declare that the experimental data that support the findings of this paper are available within the article and its Supplementary Information files. Other findings in this study are available from the corresponding authors on reasonable request. Source data are provided with this paper.

References

  1. Zhang, M. et al. Single-layered organic photovoltaics with double cascading charge transport pathways: 18% efficiencies. Nat. Commun. 12, 309 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Liu, Q. et al. 18% Efficiency organic solar cells. Sci. Bull. 65, 272–275 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Li, C. et al. Non-fullerene acceptors with branched side chains and improved molecular packing to exceed 18% efficiency in organic solar cells. Nat. Energy https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-021-00820-x (2021).

  4. Cui, Y. et al. Single-junction organic photovoltaic cells with approaching 18% efficiency. Adv. Mater. 32, 1908205 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Chen, X. et al. A unified description of non-radiative voltage losses in organic solar cells. Nat. Energy https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-021-00843-4 (2021).

  6. Zhang, H. et al. Over 14% efficiency in organic solar cells enabled by chlorinated nonfullerene small-molecule acceptors. Adv. Mater. 30, 1800613 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Qian, D. et al. Design rules for minimizing voltage losses in high-efficiency organic solar cells. Nat. Mater. 17, 703–709 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Hou, J. et al. Organic solar cells based on non-fullerene acceptors. Nat. Mater. 17, 119–128 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Liu, J. et al. Fast charge separation in a non-fullerene organic solar cell with a small driving force. Nat. Energy 1, 16089 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Yuan, J. et al. Single-junction organic solar cell with over 15% efficiency using fused-ring acceptor with electron-deficient core. Joule 3, 1140–1151 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Jiang, K. et al. Alkyl chain tuning of small molecule acceptors for efficient organic solar cells. Joule 3, 3020–3033 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Liu, S. et al. High-efficiency organic solar cells with low non-radiative recombination loss and low energetic disorder. Nat. Photon. 14, 300–305 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Dong, S. et al. Single-component non-halogen solvent-processed high-performance organic solar cell module with efficiency over 14%. Joule 4, 2004–2016 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Hong, L. et al. Eco-compatible solvent-processed organic photovoltaic cells with over 16% efficiency. Adv. Mater. 31, 1903441 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Lin, F. et al. A non-fullerene acceptor with enhanced intermolecular π-core interaction for high-performance organic solar cells. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 142, 15246–15251 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Zhu, W. et al. Crystallography, morphology, electronic structure, and transport in non-fullerene/non-indacenodithienothiophene polymer:Y6 solar cells. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 142, 14532–14547 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Zhu, L. et al. Efficient organic solar cell with 16.88% efficiency enabled by refined acceptor crystallization and morphology with improved charge transfer and transport properties. Adv. Energy Mater. 10, 1904234 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Manley, E. F. et al. In situ analysis of solvent and additive effects on film morphology evolution in spin-cast small-molecule and polymer photovoltaic materials. Adv. Energy Mater. 8, 1800611 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Sun, R. et al. Achieving eco-compatible organic solar cells with efficiency >16.5% based on an iridium complex-incorporated polymer donor. Sol. RRL 4, 2000156 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Torabi, S. et al. Strategy for enhancing the dielectric constant of organic semiconductors without sacrificing charge carrier mobility and solubility. Adv. Funct. Mater. 25, 150–157 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Chen, X. et al. Diketopyrrolopyrrole-based conjugated polymers bearing branched oligo(ethylene glycol) side chains for photovoltaic devices. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. Engl. 55, 10376–10380 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Meng, B. et al. Replacing alkyl with oligo(ethylene glycol) as side chains of conjugated polymers for close π-π stacking. Macromolecules 48, 4357–4363 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Meng, B. et al. Oligo(ethylene glycol) as side chains of conjugated polymers for optoelectronic applications. Polym. Chem. 11, 1261–1270 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Huang, W. Y. et al. Aggregation and gelation effects on the performance of poly(3-hexylthiophene)/fullerene solar cells. Macromolecules 41, 7485–7489 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Wedler, S. et al. A role of torsional flexibility in the film formation process in two π-conjugated model oligomers. J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 11, 9379–9386 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Li, S. et al. Asymmetric electron acceptors for high-efficiency and low-energy-loss organic photovoltaics. Adv. Mater. 32, 2001160 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Fan, B. et al. Fine-tuning of the chemical structure of photoactive materials for highly efficient organic photovoltaics. Nat. Energy 3, 1051–1058 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Vohra, V. et al. Efficient inverted polymer solar cells employing favourable molecular orientation. Nat. Photon. 9, 403–408 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Yang, Y. et al. High-performance multiple-donor bulk heterojunction solar cells. Nat. Photon. 9, 190 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Perdigón-Toro, L. et al. Barrierless free charge generation in the high-performance PM6:Y6 bulk heterojunction non-fullerene solar cell. Adv. Mater. 32, 1906763 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Abdelsamie, M. et al. In situ UV-visible absorption during spin-coating of organic semiconductors: a new probe for organic electronics and photovoltaics. J. Mater. Chem. C 2, 3373–3381 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Mao, Y. et al. Evolution of molecular aggregation in bar-coated non-fullerene organic solar cells. Mater. Chem. Front. 3, 1062–1070 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. van Franeker, J. J. et al. A real-time study of the benefits of co-solvents in polymer solar cell processing. Nat. Commun. 6, 6229 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. Burlingame, Q. et al. Intrinsically stable organic solar cells under high-intensity illumination. Nature 573, 394–397 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Ghasemi, M. et al. A molecular interaction-diffusion framework for predicting organic solar cell stability. Nat. Mater. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-020-00872-6 (2021).

  36. Duan, L. et al. Comparative analysis of burn-in photo-degradation in non-fullerene COi8DFIC acceptor based high-efficiency ternary organic solar cells. Mater. Chem. Front. 3, 1085–1096 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. Günther, M. et al. Increasing photostability of inverted nonfullerene organic solar cells by using fullerene derivative additives. ACS Appl. Mater. Inter. 13, 19072–19084 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. Park, S. et al. Progress in materials, solution processes, and long-term stability for large-area organic photovoltaics. Adv. Mater. 32, 2002217 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  39. Popović, D. et al. Preparation of efficient oligomer-based bulk-heterojunction solar cells from eco-friendly solvents. J. Mater. Chem. C 5, 9920–9928 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. Pan, F. et al. High electron mobility fluorinated indacenodithiophene small molecule acceptors for organic solar cells. Chinese Chem. Lett. 32, 1257–1262 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  41. Zhang, W. et al. Indacenodithiophene semiconducting polymers for high-performance, air-stable transistors. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 132, 11437–11439 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  42. Zhang, J. et al. Enhancing performance of large-area organic solar cells with thick film via ternary strategy. Small 13, 1700388 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  43. Liao, C.-Y. et al. Processing strategies for an organic photovoltaic module with over 10% efficiency. Joule 4, 189–206 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  44. Rasool, S. et al. Room temperature processed highly efficient large-area polymer solar cells achieved with molecular engineering of copolymers. Adv. Energy Mater. 9, 1900168 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  45. Ibraikulov, O. A. et al. ITO-free organic photovoltaic modules based on fluorinated polymers deposited from non-halogenated solution: a major step toward large-scale module production. Solar RRL 3, 1900273 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank O. Inganäs, J. Bergqvist and T. Osterberg for helpful discussions. We thank J.D. Zhang, H.X. Li and Z.X. Peng for helpful measurement of 2D GIWAXS in the Beijing Synchrotron Radiation Facility (BSRF) 1W1A and Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility (SSRF) BL14B for the revised manuscript. Y.W.L. acknowledges the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 51922074, 22075194, 51673138 and 51820105003), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (grant no. 2020YFB1506400), the Natural Science Foundation of the Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions of China (grant no. 20KJA430010), the Tang Scholar, the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (PAPD), Collaborative Innovation Center of Suzhou Nano Science and Technology for financial support. H.Y.C. acknowledges the Postgraduate Research and Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province (grant no. KYCX21_2939) for financial support. L.K., S.A. and J.B. acknowledge the Czech Science Foundation (grant no. GA18-12925S) for financial support. The research at Linköping was supported by the Swedish Energy Agency Energimyndigheten (grant nos. 48382-1 and 52474-1), the Swedish Research Council VR (grant nos. 2016-06146, 2018-05484 and 2018-06048), the Swedish Government Strategic Research Area in Materials Science on Functional Materials at Linköping University (faculty grant no. SFO-Mat-LiU #2009-00971), the Swedish Research Council FORMAS (grant no. 2019-01071), Åforsk and Olle Engkvists Stiftelse (grant no. 196-0134). F.G. acknowledges the Stiftelsen för Strategisk Forskning through a Future Research Leader programme (FFL18-0322).

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Haiyang Chen, Rui Zhang.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Advanced Optoelectronic Materials, Suzhou Key Laboratory of Novel Semiconductor-optoelectronics Materials and Devices, College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Soochow University, Suzhou, China

    Haiyang Chen, Xiaobin Chen, Guang Zeng, Ben Zhang, Weijie Chen, Guiying Xu, Yaowen Li & Yongfang Li

  2. Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology (IFM), Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden

    Rui Zhang & Feng Gao

  3. Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic

    Libor Kobera, Sabina Abbrent & Jiri Brus

  4. Department of Energy Engineering, School of Energy and Chemical Engineering, Perovtronics Research Center, Low Dimensional Carbon Materials Center, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), Ulsan, Republic of Korea

    Jiyeon Oh, So-Huei Kang & Changduk Yang

  5. MOE Key Laboratory of Low-grade Energy Utilization Technologies and Systems, CQU-NUS Renewable Energy Materials & Devices Joint Laboratory, School of Energy & Power Engineering, Chongqing University, Chongqing, China

    Shanshan Chen

  6. Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences; Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Jianhui Hou & Yongfang Li

Authors
  1. Haiyang Chen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Rui Zhang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Xiaobin Chen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Guang Zeng
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Libor Kobera
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Sabina Abbrent
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Ben Zhang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  8. Weijie Chen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  9. Guiying Xu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  10. Jiyeon Oh
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  11. So-Huei Kang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  12. Shanshan Chen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  13. Changduk Yang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  14. Jiri Brus
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  15. Jianhui Hou
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  16. Feng Gao
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  17. Yaowen Li
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  18. Yongfang Li
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

H.C. and R.Z. contributed equally to this work. F.G., Yaowen Li and Yongfang Li conceived the project, H.C. developed the new material BTO and contributed to the synthesis of the material Y6. R.Z. conceived the morphological evolution process and mechanism of manipulating molecular organization. R.Z. measured the in-situ absorption spectra and performed the results analysis. R.Z. and H.C. measured the solution solubility and performed the results analysis. L.K., S.A. and J.B. measured the 2D NMR and performed the results analysis. X.C., B.Z. and G.Z. made the devices. H.C., R.Z., X.C., G.X. and J.H. participated in the characterizations of materials and devices. J.O., S.-H.K., S.C. and C.Y. conducted the GIWAXS measurements. H.C., R.Z., W.C., F.G., Yaowen Li and Yongfang Li contributed to the results analysis. H.C., R.Z., F.G. and Yaowen Li wrote the manuscript. F.G., Yaowen Li and Yongfang Li supervised the project. All authors discussed the results and commented on the final manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Feng Gao or Yaowen Li.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Peer review information Nature Energy thanks Jun Liu and the other, anonymous, reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–38, Discussion 1–5 and Tables 1–20.

Reporting Summary

Supplementary Data

Statistical source data.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 2

Statistical source data.

Source Data Fig. 4

Statistical source data.

Source Data Fig. 5

Statistical source data.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Chen, H., Zhang, R., Chen, X. et al. A guest-assisted molecular-organization approach for >17% efficiency organic solar cells using environmentally friendly solvents. Nat Energy 6, 1045–1053 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-021-00923-5

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-021-00923-5

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing