Flexible, highly efficient all-polymer solar cells

• DOI: 10.1038/ncomms9547
• Publication Date: 2015-10-09T10:01:00Z
• Authors: Taesu Kim; Jae-Han Kim; Tae Eui Kang; Changyeon Lee; Hyunbum Kang; Minkwan Shin; Cheng Wang; Biwu Ma; Unyong Jeong; Taek-Soo Kim; Bumjoon J. Kim
• Keywords: electron; PHOTOVOLTAIC DEVICES; BLEND MORPHOLOGY; ULTRATHIN; polymer; 02 engineering and technology; 7. Clean energy; Article; ACCEPTOR; Young modulus; controlled study; electron transport; STRETCHABLE ELECTRONICS; atomic force microscopy; ORGANIC PHOTOVOLTAICS; NAPHTHALENE DIIMIDE; fullerene; COPOLYMER; PERFORMANCE; solar cell; radiation scattering; chemical structure; cells; 0210 nano-technology; CONJUGATED POLYMERS; conductance

AbstractAll-polymer solar cells have shown great potential as flexible and portable power generators. These devices should offer good mechanical endurance with high power-conversion efficiency for viability in commercial applications. In this work, we develop highly efficient and mechanically robust all-polymer solar cells that are based on the PBDTTTPD polymer donor and the P(NDI2HD-T) polymer acceptor. These systems exhibit high power-conversion efficiency of 6.64%. Also, the proposed all-polymer solar cells have even better performance than the control polymer-fullerene devices with phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) as the electron acceptor (6.12%). More importantly, our all-polymer solar cells exhibit dramatically enhanced strength and flexibility compared with polymer/PCBM devices, with 60- and 470-fold improvements in elongation at break and toughness, respectively. The superior mechanical properties of all-polymer solar cells afford greater tolerance to severe deformations than conventional polymer-fullerene solar cells, making them much better candidates for applications in flexible and portable devices.