Lu Shirong Team’s Latest Achievements in Collaboration with Ligang Team from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
The preparation of efficient organic solar cells, breaking the world record for highest efficiency and advancing the commercialization process
Lu Shirong Team from the School of Materials Science and Engineering of Taizhou University, in collaboration with The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the Chongqing Institute of Green and Intelligent Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, made breakthrough in the field of organic solar energy cells based on structural innovation in photovoltaic materials recently. They have once again refreshed the world record for the highest efficiency of a single organic solar cell. The research, titled “Rational molecular and device design enables organic solar cells approaching 20% efficiency”, was published in Nature Communications. Prof. Lu Shirong, Prof. Li Gang, and Researcher Xiao Zeyun are the co-corresponding authors of the paper, while Yang Qianguang and Dr. Fu Jiehao are the co-first authors.
In recent years, organic solar cells with light, thin, and flexible characteristics have seen rapid development thanks to the development of new light-absorbing materials. In order to break through the efficiency bottleneck of organic solar cells, it is necessary to further reduce the energy loss of the cells while ensuring efficient light absorption and charge transport characteristics. Introducing a third component in a high-efficiency binary system is a common method for improving the efficiency of organic solar cells, but selecting the appropriate third component is a challenge for researchers because it must meet multiple key requirements, including a low charge transfer state-gap, high dielectric constant, and suitable surface energy and crystallinity. In this work, the research team systematically studied the design rules for the third component. Based on theoretical calculations and by controlling the end halogen positions, a new non-fullerene acceptor, o-BTP-eC9, was designed and synthesized. Thanks to the enhancement of the charge transfer state, o-BTP-eC9 significantly reduced the energy loss of organic solar cells. Additionally, the new acceptor demonstrated excellent miscibility, crystallinity, and energy level compatibility with the host acceptor BTP-eC9, resulting in an efficiency of 19.9% (certified by a third-party authority as 19.5%) for the ternary system based on PM6:BTP-eC9:o-BTP-eC9, once again breaking the world record for the highest efficiency of a single organic solar cell.
The publication of this achievement further advances the commercialization process of organic solar cells and provides new ideas for the design of new efficient organic solar cells.
Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-46022-3
