Scientists from Shenzhen's Southern University of Science and Technology in China have designed and synthesized a dimerized small molecule donor for ternary organic solar cells.
In the research paper “Dimerized small molecule donor enables efficient ternary organic solar cells,” published in the journal Giant, the researchers explained that ternary organic solar cells are the “feasible and efficient strategy” to achieving high-performance organic cells but emphasized the need to develop a third component to maximize efficiency.
The dimerized small molecule donor presented in this work, DSMD-βV, was fabricated by connecting two asymmetric small molecule donors with the vinyl group. “An asymmetric small donor with bromine substituted end group, named compound, was obtained through a series of ingenious synthesis strategies,” the scientists said. “Subsequently, the compound was coupled with vinyl to synthesize the target product DSMD-βV via a Stille-coupling reaction, employing Pd2(dba)3 as the catalyst and P(o-tol)3 as the ligand.”
DSMD-βV, an oligomeric molecule, is considered a suitable third component by the scientists due to its absorption, as it displayed a wide absorption range from 350 to 800 nm, and energy level matching when compared with PM6 and BTP-eC9. The team added the introduction of DSMD-βV can also improve phase separation of PM6:BTP-eC9 based film morphology.
To test the dimerized small molecule donor, the scientists fabricated a solar cell consisting of DSMD-βV and a PM6:BTP-eC9 system as the binary matrix. Upon testing, they found the PM6:DSMD-βV:BTP-eC9 ternary organic cell device recorded a power conversion efficiency of 18.26%, compared to a result of 17.63% in a PM6:BTP-eC9-based binary cell.
The research emphasized that the ternary device featuring DSMD-βV also achieved more effective exciton dissociation, suppressed trap-assisted recombination, promoted charge transfer, inhibited charge recombination and improved carrier lifetime and extraction time when compared to the reference binary device.
“This work indicates that the dimeric small molecule donor is a promising third component candidate for constructing efficient ternary organic solar cells,” the researchers concluded, “which also opens up a unique idea for the construction of efficient ternary organic solar cells.”
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