Teaching an old dog new tricks: Polyfullerenes as a route to the enhanced morphological stability of bulk heterojunctions

Simon Dowland^a, Andreas Distler^a, Hans-Joachim Egelhaaf^a, Hasina Ramanitra^b, Thomas Chassé^c, Graham Morse^d, Roger Hiorns^e

^aBelectric OPV GmbH, Landgrabenstr. 94, Nürnberg, 90443, Germany

^bEPCP, IPREM (UMR-5254), Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour, 2 avenue Président Angot, 64053 Pau, France

^cInstitute of Physical and Theoretical Chemistry, University of Tübingen, Germany, Auf der Morgenstelle, 18, Tübingen, Germany

^dMerck Chemicals Ltd, Southampton SO16 7QD

^eCNRS, EPCP, IPREM (UMR-5254), 2 avenue du Président Angot, 64053 Pau, Cedex, France

^fSolar Factory of the Future, ZAE Bayern, Fürther Str. 250, EnCN Auf AEG, 90429, Nürnberg, Germany

International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics
Proceedings of International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics 2015 (HOPV15)

Roma, Italy, 2015 May 11th - 13th

Organizer: Filippo De Angelis

Oral, Simon Dowland, presentation 186
Publication date: 5th February 2015

Over the last 5-10 years the field of Organic Photovoltaics (OPV) has witnessed a significant and steady improvement in reported efficiencies.¹ This has been predominantly driven by the development of new polymer donor materials with improved absorption properties and a more effective matching of their energy levels with a complementary acceptor.² However, some of these initially promising materials also suffer from a detrimental thermal instability at relatively low temperatures leading to changes in active layer morphology and a catastrophic loss in device efficiency.³ Such instability makes all polymers exhibiting this property unsuitable for application in large scale industrial fabrication processes aiming to produce photovoltaic devices with a reasonable operational lifetime. Inhibiting or sufficiently retarding the process responsible for this behaviour would allow for such polymers to be seriously considered as viable materials for use commercially, by increasing their tolerance to higher processing termperatures while simultaneously extending their intrinsic lifetimes. Here we report on the utilisation of a new class of fullerene polymer for use in bulk heterojunction solar cells. While such acceptor materials currently appear not to facilitate improved device performance, the incorporation of small amounts of these fullerenes are shown to significantly retard the rate of thermally induced degradation of bulk heterojunction solar cells. This enhanced stability is demonstrated to be applicable to a variety of donor polymer materials under thermal stress at temperatures used for the industrial scale production of OPV. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Program FP7/2011 under grant agreement ESTABLIS no. 290022.

1. Chen, H-Y.; Hou, J.; Zhang, S.; Liang, Y.; Yang, G.; Yang, Y.; Yu, L.; Wu, Y.; Li, G. Polymer solar cells with enhanced open-circuit voltage and efficiency. Nature Photonics 2009, 3, 649-653 He, Z.; Zhong, C.; Su, S.; Xu, M.; Wu, H.; Cao, Y. Enhanced power-conversion efficiency in polymer solar cells using an inverted devices structure. Nature Photonics 2012, 6, 591-595 2. Brabec, C.; Gowrisanker, S.; Halls, J. J. M.; Laird, D.; Jia, S.; Williams, S. P. Polymer-Fullerene Bulk Heterojunction Solar Cells. Advanced Materials 2010, 22, 3839-3856 3. Derue, L.; Dautel, O.; Tournebize, A.; Drees, M.; Pan, H.; Berthumeyrie, S.; Payageau, B.; Cloutet, E.; Chambon, S.; Hirsch, L.; Rivaton, A.; Hudhomme, P.; Facchetti, A.; Wantz, G. Thermal Stabilisation of Polymer-Fullerene Bulk Heterojunction Morphology for Efficienct Photovoltaic Solar Cells. Advanced Materials 2014, 26, 5831-5838

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