Simultaneously Optimizing Molecular Stacking and Phase Separation via Solvent-Solid Hybrid Additives Enables Organic Solar Cells with over 19% Efficiency†

Abstract

Given the crucial role of film morphology in determining the photovoltaic parameters of organic solar cells (OSCs), solvent or solid additives have been widely used to realize fine-tuned film morphological features to further improve the performance of OSCs. However, most high-performance OSCs are processed only using single component additive, either solvent additive or solid additive. Herein, a simple molecular building block, namely thieno[3,4-b]thiophene (TT), was utilized as the solid additive to coordinate with the widely used solvent additive, 1-chloronaphthalene (CN), to modulate the film morphology. Systematical investigations revealed that the addition of TT could prevent the excessive aggregation to form a delicate nanoscale phase separation, leading to enhanced charge transport and suppressed charge recombination, as well as superior photovoltaic performance. Consequently, the PM6:Y6 based OSCs with the addition of hybrid additive of CN + TT demonstrated the optimal PCE of 18.52%, with a notable FF of 79.6%. More impressively, the PM6:Y6:PC₇₁BM based ternary OSCs treated with the hybrid additives delivered a remarkable efficiency of 19.05%, which ranks among the best values of Y6-based OSCs reported so far. This work highlights the importance of the hybrid additive strategy in regulating the active layer morphology towards significantly improved performance.