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Research Article | Open Access

Synergistic fibrillization engineering in donor and acceptor phases enables high-performance all-polymer solar cells

Bin Zhang1(), Yushou Zhao1, Xiaofeng Qin1, Aiqin Li1, Xinling Li1, Wenming Li1, Weile Guo1, Xiaolan Qin1, Zhicai He3, Yong Hua4, Menglan Lv1(), Liming Ding2()
Engineering Research Center for Energy Conversion and Storage Technology of Guizhou, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Guizhou University, Guiyang 550025, China
School of Chemical Engineering and Light Industry, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, China
Institute of Polymer Optoelectronic Materials and Devices, State Key Laboratory of Luminescent Materials and Devices, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, China
School of Materials and Energy, Yunnan University, Kunming 650091, China
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Through synergistic fibrillization engineering between polymer donors and acceptors, the morphology of all-polymer solar cells is precisely controlled, thus achieving high-performance devices.

Abstract

Recently, all-polymer solar cells (all-PSCs) have become an important organic photovoltaic technology, ascribing to their unique characteristics of high stability and mechanical endurance. However, the morphology control between polymer donor and polymer acceptor suffers from tough difficulties, resulting from the nature of rigid planarity and chain entanglement in the conjugated polymer backbones. In this work, we utilize an additive, 1-chloro-naphthalene (CN), to regulate polymer chain stacking and orientation in D18:PY-IT system, resulting in the formation of versatile nano-scale polymer fibrillization between donor and acceptor phases. Consequently, the CN-modified D18:PY-IT blend film shows improved molecular stacking characteristics and distinct nano-scale bi-continuous phase separation. Attributing to the incorporation of CN additive in a bulk-heterojunction (BHJ) D18:PY-IT system, it exhibits higher photovoltaic performance than the as-cast and only thermal annealing (TA) treated devices, where the CN-based device provides a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 17.31%, an open-circuit voltage (VOC) of 0.955 V, a short-circuit current density (JSC) of 24.16 mA·cm−2, and a fill factor (FF) of 74.99%, respectively. This is one of the highest photovoltaic performances reported in the D18:PY-IT based binary BHJ all-PSCs. Hence, it is evident that the morphology in all-PSCs can be feasibly modulated via incorporating appropriate additive into active layer for achieving excellent photovoltaic performance.

Keywords

fibrillization engineeringmorphology controladditive1-chloro-naphthaleneall-polymer solar cells

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Nano Research
Volume 18 Issue 4,
April 2025
Article number: 94907295
DOI: 10.26599/NR.2025.94907295
Cite this article:
Zhang B, Zhao Y, Qin X, et al. Synergistic fibrillization engineering in donor and acceptor phases enables high-performance all-polymer solar cells. Nano Research, 2025, 18(4): 94907295. https://doi.org/10.26599/NR.2025.94907295
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The summary of photovoltaic performance based on D18:PY-IT under AM 1.5 G (JSCintegrated is the integrated short-circuit current density from EQE curves)

DevicesVOC (V)JSC (mA·cm−2)JSCintegrated (mA·cm−2)FF (%)PCE (%)
as-cast0.947 (0.948 ± 0.006)23.51 (23.31 ± 0.35)22.1769.33 (68.86 ± 0.66)15.43 (15.22 ± 0.15)
TA0.945 (0.949 ± 0.004)24.56 (24.13 ± 0.47)23.3468.57 (68.66 ± 0.72)15.91 (15.72 ± 0.14)
CN & TA0.955 (0.949 ± 0.006)24.16 (24.36 ± 0.34)23.2274.99 (74.36 ± 0.61)17.31 (17.19 ± 0.11)