Side-Chain Impact on Molecular Orientation of Organic Semiconductor Acceptors: High Performance Nonfullerene Polymer Solar Cells with Thick Active Layer over 400 nm

Abstract

A new n-type organic semiconductor (n-OS) acceptor IDTPC with n-hexyl side chains is developed. Compared to side chains with 4-hexylphenyl counterparts (IDTCN), such a design endows the acceptor of IDTPC with higher electron mobility, more ordered face-on molecular packing, and lower band gap. Therefore, the IDTPC-based polymer solar cells (PSCs) with a newly developed wide bandgap polymer PTQ10 as donor exhibit the maximum power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 12.2%, a near 65% improvement in PCE relative to the IDTCN-based control device. Most importantly, the IDTPC-based device is insensitive to the thickness of the active layer from 70 to 505 nm, which still gives a PCE of 10.0% with the active-layer thickness of 400 nm. To the best of the authors' knowledge, a PCE of 10.0% is the highest value for the nonfullerene PSCs with an active layer thicker than 400 nm. These results reveal that the blend of PTQ10 and IDTPC exhibits great potential for highly efficient nonfullerene PSCs and large-area device fabrication.