One More Step Towards Better Stability of Non-Fullerene Organic Solar Cells: Advances, Challenges, Future Perspective, and Era of Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

Non-fullerene acceptors-based organic solar cells (NF-OSCs) have achieved notable advancement during the past few years. Recently, the power conversion efficiency (PCE) has surpassed 20 % due to the development of new photovoltaic materials and device optimization strategies, however, inferior stability is still a key obstacle that limits its commercialization which is mainly due to a lack of understanding of the underlying degradation mechanism of NF-OSCs. In this review, we first briefly discuss the major development in structural design and performance of NFAs followed by their distinctive features in OSCs and stability measurement protocol. Afterward, we explain various limiting factors and different degradation mechanisms in depth for NF-OSCs. Furthermore, we highlight and discuss the recent progress toward highly stable NF-OSC with a detailed discussion of various aspects and effective strategies such as the molecular design and modification of active layer material, additive, third component approach, interface engineering, electrode engineering, and other potential strategies including encapsulation technique, and single component approach. The main challenges and the guidance for future research to overcome the existing stability issues to achieve stable OSCs are also presented. Finally, the potential role of artificial intelligence (AI) in improving the performance of NF-OSCs is highlighted in the last section of this review.