Efficient Semitransparent Organic Solar Cells with Tunable Color enabled by an Ultralow‐Bandgap Nonfullerene Acceptor

• DOI: 10.1002/adma.201703080
• Publication Date: 2017-10-04T16:44:51Z
• Authors: Yong Cui; Chenyi Yang; Huifeng Yao; Jie Zhu; Yuming Wang; Guoxiao Jia; Feng Gao; Jianhui Hou
• Keywords: 02 engineering and technology; 0210 nano-technology; 01 natural sciences; 7. Clean energy; 0104 chemical sciences

AbstractSemitransparent organic solar cells (OSCs) show attractive potential in power‐generating windows. However, the development of semitransparent OSCs is lagging behind opaque OSCs. Here, an ultralow‐bandgap nonfullerene acceptor, “IEICO‐4Cl”, is designed and synthesized, whose absorption spectrum is mainly located in the near‐infrared region. When IEICO‐4Cl is blended with different polymer donors (J52, PBDB‐T, and PTB7‐Th), the colors of the blend films can be tuned from purple to blue to cyan, respectively. Traditional OSCs with a nontransparent Al electrode fabricated by J52:IEICO‐4Cl, PBDB‐T:IEICO‐4Cl, and PTB7‐Th:IEICO‐4Cl yield power conversion efficiencies (PCE) of 9.65 ± 0.33%, 9.43 ± 0.13%, and 10.0 ± 0.2%, respectively. By using 15 nm Au as the electrode, semitransparent OSCs based on these three blends also show PCEs of 6.37%, 6.24%, and 6.97% with high average visible transmittance (AVT) of 35.1%, 35.7%, and 33.5%, respectively. Furthermore, via changing the thickness of Au in the OSCs, the relationship between the transmittance and efficiency is studied in detail, and an impressive PCE of 8.38% with an AVT of 25.7% is obtained, which is an outstanding value in the semitransparent OSCs.