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Updated: Jun 26, 2026

Electroactive Polymer Nanoparticles Exhibiting Photothermal Properties
Published on: January 8, 2016
Insulator Polymer Matrix Construction on All-Small-Molecule Photoactive Blend Towards Extrapolated 15000 Hour T80
Ruijie Ma1, Xinyu Jiang2, Top Archie Dela Peña3,4
1Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Research Institute for Smart Energy (RISE), Photonic Research Institute (PRI), The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China.
Abstract:
To boost the stability of all-small-molecule (ASM) organic photovoltaic (OPV) blends, an insulator polymer called styrene-ethylene-butylene-styrene (SEBS) as morphology stabilizer is applied into the host system of small molecules BM-ClEH:BO-4Cl. Minor addition of SEBS (1 mg/ml in host solution) provides a significantly enhanced T80 value of 15000 hours (extrapolated), surpassing doping-free (0 mg/ml) and heavy doping (10 mg/ml) counterparts (900 hours, 30 hours). The material reproducibility and cost-effectiveness of the active layer will not be affected by this industrially available polymer, where the power conversion efficiency (PCE) can be well maintained at 15.02%, which is still a decent value for non-halogen solvent-treated ASM OPV. Morphological and photophysical characterizations clearly demonstrate SEBS's pivotal effect on suppressing the degradation of donor molecules and blend film's crystallization/aggregation reorganization, which protects the exciton dynamics effectively. This work pays meaningful attention to the ASM system stability, performs a smart strategy to suppress the film morphology degradation, and releases a comprehensive understanding of the mechanism of device performance reduction.
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