Ternary Organic Solar Cells Based on Two Non-fullerene Acceptors with Complimentary Absorption and Balanced Crystallinity

The ternary blend structure has been demonstrated as an effective approach to increase the power conversion efficiency of organic solar cells. An effective approach to enhance the power conversion efficiency of ternary solar cells is based on two non-fullerene acceptors with complimentary absorption range and balanced crystallinity. In this work, we have introduced a high crystallinity small-molecule acceptor, named C8IDTT-4Cl with appropriate alkyl side chains into a low crystalline blend of conjugated polymer donor PBDT-TPD and fused-ring electron acceptor ITIC-4F. A ternary device based on the blend PBDT-TPD:ITIC-4F:C8IDTT-4Cl exhibits a best power conversion efficiency of 9.51% with a simultaneous improvement of the short-circuit current density to 18.76 mA·cm^–2 and the fill factor up to 67.53%. The absorption onset for C8IDTT-4Cl is located at 900 nm, so that the well complementary light absorption is beneficial to the photocurrent. In addition, the existence of high crystallinity C8IDTT-4Cl in the ternary device is found helpful to modulate crystallinity, improve heterojunction morphologies and stacking structure, therefore to realize higher charge mobility and better performance.