Overcoming the Challenges of Nonfullerene Acceptors in Organic Solar Cell Applications

Dear Colleagues,

Organic solar cells (OSC) with n-type non-fullerene acceptors (NFA) have attracted significant attention recently because of the rapid rise in their power conversion efficiency (PCE) up to 14–15%. The main purpose of developing new acceptor materials is to replace fullerene and to act on attaining high power conversion efficiencies for its commercialization. The use of fullerene molecule in OSC devices has limited power conversion efficiencies. Therefore, it is the current requirement of the OSC area of research to search for new acceptor materials which can improve the performance of existing solution-processed devices. These NFAs are either small molecules or polymers depending on the new building blocks with design strategies that can tune properties such as light absorption, energy level, electron mobility, and morphology to overcome the challenges of OSC. The underlying fundamental physical mechanisms of charge transport and recombination in non-fullerene organic solar cells must be identified in order to realize high performances. The goal of this issue is to answer some of the most scientific questions in fullerene free acceptor systems such as 1) how charge carrier transport occurs in different acceptor systems aside from fullerene, 2) how charge transfer reactions couple to molecular structure under large driving forces, exhibiting efficient charge dissociation, 3) what steps can boost photocurrent and power conversion efficiency of non-fullerene based acceptor devices, and 4) how design strategies can improve the overall performance of organic solar cells.

Dr. Chandramouli Kulshreshtha
Guest Editor

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• Organic solar cells
• Non fullerene acceptors
• Bulk-heterojunction
• Small molecule acceptors
• Polymer acceptor molecules