High efficiency and air stable P3HT based polymer solar cells with a new non fullerene acceptor
Solution processed organic photovoltaics (OPV) offer the attractive prospect of low cost, light weight and environmentally benign solar energy production. The highest efficiency OPV at present use low bandgap donor polymers, many of which suffer from problems with stability and synthetic scalability. They also rely on fullerene based acceptors, which themselves have issues with cost, stability and limited spectral absorption. Here we present a new non fullerene acceptor that has been specifically designed to give improved performance alongside the wide bandgap donor poly(3 hexylthiophene) a polymer with significantly better prospects for commercial OPV due to its relative scalability and stability. Thanks to the well matched optoelectronic and morphological properties of these materials, efficiencies of 6.4% are achieved which is the highest reported for fullerene free P3HT devices. In addition, dramatically improved air stability is demonstrated relative to other high efficiency OPV, showing the excellent potential of this new material combination for future technological applications.
Nature communications