Two Compatible Polymer Donors Enabling Ternary Organic Solar Cells with a Small Nonradiative Energy Loss and Broad Composition Tolerance

Abstract

High-performance nonfullerene ternary organic solar cells (OSCs) with two polymer donors are less frequently reported because of the limited numbers of efficient polymer donors with good compatibility. Herein, a wide-bandgap polymer P1 with a deep-lying highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) level is incorporated as the third component into the benchmark PM6:Y6 binary system to fabricate ternary OSCs. The introduction of P1 not only leads to extended absorption coverage and forms a cascade-like energy level alignment but also shows excellent compatibility with PM6, resulting in a favorable morphology in the ternary blend. More importantly, P1 possesses a deeper HOMO level (-5.6 eV) than most well-known donor polymers, which enables resulting ternary OSCs with an improved open-circuit voltage. As a result, the optimized ternary OSCs with 40 wt% P1 in donors achieve a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 16.2% with a small nonradiative recombination loss of 0.23 eV, which is among the highest values of ternary OSCs based on two polymer donors. In addition, the ternary OSCs show a broad composition tolerance with a high PCE of over 14% throughout the whole blend ratios. These results provide an effective approach to fabricate efficient ternary OSCs by synergizing two wide-bandgap polymer donors.