Proceedings of Materials for Sustainable Development Conference (MAT-SUS) (NFM22)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29363/nanoge.nfm.2022.165
Publication date: 11th July 2022
High efficiency and mechanical robustness are both crucial for the practical applications of all-polymer solar cells (all-PSCs) in stretchable and wearable electronics.[1] In this regard, a series of new polymer acceptors (PAs) is reported by incorporating a flexible conjugation-break spacer (FCBS) to achieve highly efficient and mechanically robust all-PSCs. Incorporation of FCBS affords the effective modulation of the crystallinity and pre-aggregation of the PAs, and achieves the optimal blend morphology with polymer donor (PD), increasing both the photovoltaic and mechanical properties of all-PSCs. [2] In particular, an all-PSC based on PYTS-0.3 PA incorporated with 30% FCBS and PBDB-T PD demonstrates a high power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 14.68% and excellent mechanical stretchability with a crack onset strain (COS) of 21.64% and toughness of 3.86 MJ m-3, which is significantly superior to those of devices with the PA without the FCBS (PYTS-0.0, PCE = 13.01%, and toughness = 2.70 MJ m-3). In a follow up work, we have investigated the influence of the length of flexible spacer. It was found that the polymer acceptor with shorter spacer achieved the highest performance. These results reveal that the introduction of FCBS into the conjugated backbone is a highly feasible strategy to simultaneously improve the PCE and stretchability of PSCs.[3]
We thank the Swedish Research Council (2016-06146, 2019-02345), the Swedish Research Council Formas, the Wallenberg Foundation (2017.0186 and 2016.0059) for financial support. This work was also supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2020M3H4A1A02084906 and 2020R1A4A1018516).