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Organic Solar Cells: Design, Synthesis, and Applications

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A special issue of Molecules (ISSN 1420-3049). This special issue belongs to the section "Applied Chemistry".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 July 2024 | Viewed by 8168

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Lingpeng Yan

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Guest Editor

Institute of New Carbon Materials, Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan 030024, China
Interests: organic solar cells; stability; degradation mechanism; nano carbon functional materials

Dr. Zhongqiang Wang

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Guest Editor

Key Laboratory of Interface Science and Engineering in Advanced Materials, Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan 030024, China
Interests: organic solar cells; perovskite solar cells; surface and interface physics

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Organic solar cells (OSCs) are considered as a promising green energy technology with the advantages of lightweight, flexible, translucent, and easy to print and fabricate in large areas, which have attracted the interest of many research groups. In the past decades, researchers have made a lot of efforts to improve the performance of OSCs, such as designing and synthesizing of new nonfullerene materials, optimizing the device structure, and finally the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of OSCs now exceeds 19%. Furthermore, the lifetime in air, high temperature and UV environments has been gradually extended, and applications such as large area printing, indoor microelectronics, building integrated photovoltaic systems , space shuttle and color decoration have been developed, making the commercial value of OSCs prominent.

This special issue aims to provide a broad survey of the latest advances in organic solar cells. Original research articles or reviews that discuss the design and synthesis of new functional materials, device structure optimization, degradation mechanism, stability improvement and various applications of organic solar cells are welcome.

Dr. Lingpeng Yan
Dr. Zhongqiang Wang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

organic solar cells
functional nanomaterials
interface layer
device optimization
high efficiency
stability

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

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13 pages, 4065 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Thermal-Induced Performance Decay of the State-of-the-Art Polymer: Non-Fullerene Solar Cells and the Method of Suppression

by Xingxing Qin, Xuelai Yu, Zerui Li, Jin Fang, Lingpeng Yan, Na Wu, Mathias Nyman, Ronald Österbacka, Rong Huang, Zhiyun Li and Chang-Qi Ma

Molecules 2023, 28(19), 6856; https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules28196856 - 28 Sep 2023

Viewed by 855

Abstract

Improving thermal stability is of great importance for the industrialization of polymer solar cells (PSC). In this paper, we systematically investigated the high-temperature thermal annealing effect on the device performance of the state-of-the-art polymer:non-fullerene (PM6:Y6) solar cells with an inverted structure. Results revealed that the overall performance decay (19% decrease) was mainly due to the fast open-circuit voltage (V_OC, 10% decrease) and fill factor (FF, 10% decrease) decays whereas short circuit current (J_SC) was relatively stable upon annealing at 150 °C (0.5% decrease). Pre-annealing on the ZnO/PM6:Y6 at 150 °C before the completion of cell fabrication resulted in a 1.7% performance decrease, while annealing on the ZnO/PM6:Y6/MoO₃ films led to a 10.5% performance decay, indicating that the degradation at the PM6:Y6/MoO₃ interface is the main reason for the overall performance decay. The increased ideality factor and reduced built-in potential confirmed by dark J − V curve analysis further confirmed the increased interfacial charge recombination after thermal annealing. The interaction of PM6:Y6 and MoO₃ was proved by UV-Vis absorption and XPS measurements. Such deep chemical doping of PM6:Y6 led to unfavorable band alignment at the interface, which led to increased surface charge recombination and reduced built-in potential of the cells after thermal annealing. Inserting a thin C₆₀ layer between the PM6:Y6 and MoO₃ significantly improved the cells’ thermal stability, and less than 2% decay was measured for the optimized cell with 3 nm C₆₀. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Organic Solar Cells: Design, Synthesis, and Applications)

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16 pages, 3613 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Spatial Balance of Photogenerated Charge Carriers in Active Layers of Polymer Solar Cells

by Chan Im, Sang Woong Kang, Jeong Yoon Choi, Jongdeok An, Júlia Mičová and Zdeněk Remeš

Molecules 2023, 28(15), 5823; https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules28155823 - 2 Aug 2023

Viewed by 807

Abstract

Bulk heterojunction polymer solar cells (PSCs) blended with non-fullerene-type acceptors (NFAs) possess good solar power conversion efficiency and compatibility with flexible electronics, rendering them good candidates for mobile photovoltaic applications. However, their internal absorption performance and mechanism are yet to be fully elucidated because of their complicated interference effect caused by their multilayer device structure. The transfer matrix method (TMM) is ideal for analyzing complex optical electric fields by considering multilayer interference effects. In this study, an active layer (AL) thickness-dependent TMM is used to obtain accurate information on the photon-capturing mechanisms of NFA-based PSCs for comparison with experimental results. Devices with AL thicknesses of 40–350 nm were prepared, and the AL-thickness-dependent device parameters with incident photon-to-current efficiency spectra were compared with the calculated internal absorption spectra of the TMM. The spectrally and spatially resolved spectra as a function of the AL thickness and excitation wavelength revealed that the power conversion efficiency of the NFA-blended PSC decreased with the increasing AL thickness after reaching a maximum of ~100 nm; by contrast, the internal absorption efficiency showed the opposite trend. Furthermore, the TMM spectra indicated that the spatial distribution of the photogenerated charge carriers became significantly imbalanced as the AL thickness increased, implying that the AL-dependent loss stemmed from the discrepancy between the absorption and the extracted charge carriers. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Organic Solar Cells: Design, Synthesis, and Applications)

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Graphical abstract

10 pages, 2160 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Enhanced Performance of Flexible Organic Photovoltaics Based on MoS₂ Micro-Nano Array

by Cuiyun Peng, Zhitian Ling, Minghao Qu, Chenhui Cao, Guo Chen, Wei Shi and Bin Wei

Molecules 2023, 28(2), 813; https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules28020813 - 13 Jan 2023

Viewed by 1353

Abstract

In this work, we investigated the influence of MoS₂ functioning as an electron transport layer (ETL) on the inverted flexible organic photovoltaics (FOPVs). Three ETLs, including MoS₂, lithium quinolate (Liq), and a MoS₂/Liq bilayer, were evaporated onto ITO-integrated polyethylene terephthalate substrates (PET-ITO), and the properties of transmittance, water contact angle, and reflectivity of the films were analyzed. The results revealed that MoS₂ was helpful to improve the lipophilicity of the surface of the ETL, which was conducive to the deposition of the active layer. In addition, the reflectivity of MoS₂ to the light ranging from 400 to 600 nm was the largest among the pristine PET-ITO substrate and the PET-ITO coated with three ETLs, which promoted the efficient use of the light. The efficiency of the FOPV with MoS₂/Liq ETL was 73% higher than that of the pristine device. This was attributed to the nearly two-fold amplification of the MoS₂ array to the light field, which promoted the FOPV to absorb more light. Moreover, the efficiency of the FOPV with MoS₂ was maintained under different illumination angles and bending angles. The results demonstrate the promising applications of MoS₂ in the fabrication of FOPVs. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Organic Solar Cells: Design, Synthesis, and Applications)

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Review

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0 pages, 8150 KiB

Open AccessReview

Triazine: An Important Building Block of Organic Materials for Solar Cell Application

by Valeria Dávila Cerón, Luis Alberto Illicachi and Braulio Insuasty

Molecules 2023, 28(1), 257; https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules28010257 - 28 Dec 2022

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 4535

Abstract

Since the beginning of the 21st century, triazine-based molecules have been employed to construct different organic materials due to their unique optoelectronic properties. Among their applications, photovoltaics stands out because of the current need to develop efficient, economic, and green alternatives to energy generation based mainly on fossil fuels. Here, we review all the development of triazine-based organic materials for solar cell applications, including organic solar cells, dye-sensitized solar cells, and perovskite solar cells. Firstly, we attempt to illustrate the main synthetic routes to prepare triazine derivatives. Then, we introduce the main aspects associated with solar cells and their performance. Afterward, we discuss different works focused on the preparation, characterization, and evaluation of triazine derivatives in solar cells, distinguishing the type of photovoltaics and the role of the triazine-based material in their performance (e.g., as a donor, acceptor, hole-transporting material, electron-transporting material, among others). Throughout this review, the progress, drawbacks, and main issues of the performance of the mentioned solar cells are exposed and discussed. Finally, some conclusions and perspectives about this research topic are mentioned. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Organic Solar Cells: Design, Synthesis, and Applications)

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