Solution-grown organic single-crystalline donor-acceptor heterojunctions for photovoltaics

Organic single crystals are ideal candidates for high-performance photovoltaics due to their high charge mobility and long exciton diffusion length; however, they have not been largely considered for photovoltaics due to the practical difficulty in making a heterojunction between donor and acceptor single crystals. Here, we demonstrate that extended single-crystalline heterojunctions with a consistent donor-top and acceptor-bottom structure throughout the substrate can be simply obtained from a mixed solution of C60 (acceptor) and 3,6-bis(5-(4-n-butylphenyl)thiophene-2-yl)-2,5-bis(2-ethylhexyl)pyrrolo[3,4-c]pyrrole-1,4-dione (donor). 46 photovoltaic devices were studied with the power conversion efficiency of (0.255±0.095)% under 1 sun, which is significantly higher than the previously reported value for a vapor-grown organic single-crystalline donor-acceptor heterojunction (0.007%). As such, this work opens a practical avenue for the study of organic photovoltaics based on single crystals.