Proceedings of Online International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics (OnlineHOPV20)
Publication date: 22nd May 2020
Organic solar cells based on ternary active layers can lead to higher power conversion efficiencies than corresponding binaries, and improved stability. The parameter space for optimization of multicomponent systems is considerably more complex than that of binaries, due to both, a larger number of parameters (e.g., two relative compositions rather than one) and intricate morphology–property correlations. Most experimental reports to date reasonably limit themselves to a relatively narrow subset of compositions (e.g., the 1:1 donor/s:acceptor/s trajectory). This work advances a methodology that allows exploration of a large fraction of the ternary phase space employing only a few (<10) samples. Each sample is produced by a designed sequential deposition of the constituent inks, and results in compositions gradients with ≈5000 points/sample that cover about 15%–25% of the phase space. These effective ternary libraries are then colocally imaged by a combination of photovoltaic techniques (laser and white light photocurrent maps) and spectroscopic techniques (Raman, photoluminescence, absorption). The generality of the methodology is demonstrated by investigating three ternary systems, namely PBDB-T:ITIC:PC70BM, PTB7-Th:ITIC:PC70BM, and P3HT:O-IDFBR:O-IDTBR. Complex performance-structure landscapes through the ternary diagram as well as the emergence of several performance maxima are discovered.
A.H.B. and X.R.M. acknowledge the departments of Physics, Chemistry and Geology of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB)
as coordinators of the PhD programme in Materials Science. The authors would like to acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness through the “Severo Ochoa” Programme for Centers of Excellence in R&D (SEV- 2015-0496) and project reference PGC2018-095411-B-I00 as well as the European Research Council (ERC) under Grant Agreement No. 648901 and Agència de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca (Grant Numbers 2017-SGR-00488). The authors also thank Dr. Bernhard Dörling (ICMAB) for the customization of the blade coating setup, and Enrique Pascual, Martí Gibert, and Dr. Miquel Garriga (ICMAB) for fruitful discussions.