13%-Efficiency Quaternary Polymer Solar Cell with Nonfullerene and Fullerene as Mixed Electron Acceptor Materials

In this article, we report 13%-efficiency quaternary polymer solar cell. By introducing bis-PC₇₁BM:PC₇₁BM into a known nonfullerene system-poly[(2,6-(4,8-bis(5-(2-ethylhexyl)thiophen-2-yl))benzo[1,2- b:4,5- b']dithiophene)- co-(1,3-di(5-thiophene-2-yl)-5,7-bis(2-ethylhexyl)benzo[1,2- c:4,5- c']dithiophene-4,8-dione):3,9-bis(2-methylene-(3-(1,1-dicyanomethylene)-indanone-methyl))-5,5,11,11-tetrakis(4- n-hexylphenyl)-dithieno[2,3 d:2',3' d']- s-indaceno[1,2 b:5,6 b']dithiophene (PBDB-T:IT-M), the quaternary solar cell significantly outperforms the nonfullerene binary and the ternary (PBDB-T:IT-M:fullerene) devices with a significant increase in the short-circuit current-density (18.2 vs 16.5 and 16.8-17.5 mA/cm²) and the fill factor (0.73 vs 0.67 and 0.707-0.726), and hence, large power conversion efficiency (13% for quaternary vs 11% for the binary and 12% for the ternary). Grazing incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering data indicate that both the polymer and IT-M phase crystallinity becomes greater upon introduction of PC₇₁BM as the forth additive into the host ternary PBDB-T:IT-M:bis-PC₇₁BM, which results in an increase in both the electron and hole mobilities, contributing to the J_sc enhancement. Our results indicate that the use of the forth fullerene component provides more choices and more mechanisms than the ternary systems for tuning the photon-to-electron conversion; therefore, sheds light on the realization of high-efficiency polymer solar cells by designing the multiacceptor components with aligned energy levels, complementary absorption spectra, and improved film morphologies.