Browsing by Author "Zhu, Chenhui"

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Efficient Tandem Organic Photovoltaics with Tunable Rear Sub-cells
(2019-02-20)
Cheng, Pei
;
Liu, Yuqiang
;
Chang, Sheng-Yung
;
Li, Tengfei
;
Sun, Pengyu
A tandem structure was invented to enhance photon utilization efficiency and reduce thermal loss. Considering the unique advantages of non-fullerene acceptors (NFAs), the combination of NFAs and the tandem concept shows great potential for organic photovoltaics (OPVs). Herein, a simple strategy to balance the voltage-current trade-off in tandem OPVs by employing mixed NFAs in rear sub-cells is reported. The V-OC and J(SC) of rear sub-cells can be tuned by using the blend of donor/NFA/NFA. This strategy offers an easy approach to balance the V-OC and J(SC) in tandem OPVs toward higher power conversion efficiency (PCE) without rational and careful synthesis of new materials. Tandem OPVs based on mixed NFAs in rear sub-cells exhibited the best PCE of 13.3% in the lab. Importantly, the tandem devices were certified by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) under asymptotic scans, and a PCE of 11.52% was achieved and recognized on the most recent NREL chart.
Enabling High-Performance Tandem Organic Photovoltaic Cells by Balancing the Front and Rear Subcells
(1970-01-01)
Cheng, Pei
;
Wang, Hao-Cheng
;
Zheng, Ran
;
Zhu, Yuan
;
Dai, Shuixing
In tandem organic photovoltaics, the front subcell is based on large-bandgap materials, whereas the case of the rear subcell is more complicated. The rear subcell is generally composed of a narrow-bandgap acceptor for infrared absorption but a large-bandgap donor to realize a high open-circuit voltage. Unfortunately, most of the ultraviolet-visible part of the photons are absorbed by the front subcell; as a result, in the rear subcell, the number of excitons generated on large-bandgap donors will be reduced significantly. This reduces the (photo) conductivity and finally limits the hole-transporting property of the rear subcell. In this work, a simple and effective way is proposed to resolve this critical issue. To ensure sufficient photogenerated holes in the rear subcell, a small amount of an infrared-absorbing polymer donor as a third component is introduced, which provides a second hole-generation and transporting mechanism to minimize the aforementioned detrimental effects. Finally, the short-circuit current density of the two-terminal tandem organic photovoltaic is significantly enhanced from 10.3 to 11.7 mA cm(-2)(while retaining the open-circuit voltage and fill factor) to result in an enhanced power conversion efficiency of 15.1%.
High-Efficiency Organic Tandem Solar Cells With Effective Transition Metal Chelates Interconnecting Layer
(2017-10-01)
Chang, Sheng-Yung
;
Lin, Yu-Che
;
Sun, Pengyu
;
Hsieh, Yao-Tsung
;
Meng, Lei
Organic tandem solar cells have two sub-cells vertically connected via a tunnel junction (or interconnecting layer, ICL), which the ICL plays a critical role of determining the performance of the tandem cell. In this manuscript, we report a new design of the ICL consisting of zirconium (IV) acetylacetonate (Zr-Acac) as the electron transport layer. The Zr-Acac has a suitable work function to pin the Fermi-level of the ICL and hence, can effectively behave as the charge recombination function for the tandem device. Comparing to the reference device consisting of ZnO ETL layer, the Zr-Acac ICL can effectively enhance the efficiency by 20%, from 8.4 to 10.1% power conversion efficiencies. More importantly, the Zr-Acac ETL layer functions effectively without thermal annealing, which not only simplifies the tandem solar cell processing, but also widens the front sub-cell material selection.
Rational Tuning of Molecular Interaction and Energy Level Alignment Enables High-Performance Organic Photovoltaics
(1970-01-01)
Wang, Rui
;
Yuan, Jun
;
Han, Guangchao
;
Huang, Tianyi
;
Huang, Wenchao
The performance of organic photovoltaics (OPVs) has rapidly improved over the past years. Recent work in material design has primarily focused on developing near-infrared nonfullerene acceptors with broadening absorption that pair with commercialized donor polymers; in the meanwhile, the influence of the morphology of the blend film and the energy level alignment on the efficiency of charge separation needs to be synthetically considered. Herein, the selection rule of the donor/acceptor blend is demonstrated by rationally considering the molecular interaction and energy level alignment, and highly efficient OPV devices using both-fluorinated or both-nonfluorinated donor/acceptor blends are realized. With the enlarged absorption, ideal morphology, and efficient charge transfer, the devices based on the PBDB-T-F/Y1-4F blend and PBDB-T-F/Y6 exhibit champion power conversion efficiencies as high as 14.8% and 15.9%, respectively.
Transparent Hole-Transporting Frameworks: A Unique Strategy to Design High-Performance Semitransparent Organic Photovoltaics
(1970-01-01)
Cheng, Pei
;
Wang, Hao-Cheng
;
Zhu, Yuan
;
Zheng, Ran
;
Li, Tengfei
Thanks to the nature of molecular orbitals, the absorption spectra of organic semiconductors are not continuous like those in traditional inorganic semiconductors, which offers a unique application of organic photovoltaics (OPVs): semitransparent OPVs. Recently, the exciting progress of materials design has promoted the development of semitransparent OPVs. However, in the perspective of device engineering, almost all reported works reduce the thickness of back/reflected electrode to obtain high average visible transmittance (AVT), which is a trade-off between power conversion efficiency (PCE) and the transmittance of the whole solar spectrum (visible and infrared), and therefore limit the further development. Herein, a unique strategy of "transparent hole-transporting frameworks" is proposed. A hole-transporting large-bandgap polymer (poly[bis(4-phenyl)(2,4,6-trimethylphenyl)amine (PTAA)) is employed to partially replace polymer donors in the active layer of PBDB-T/Y1. PTAA is a p-type polymer with a large bandgap of 2.9 eV; the partial substitution of PBDB-T by PTAA reduces the absorption of the active layer only in the visible region, keeping the hole-transporting pathways as well as the optimized film morphology. As a result, semitransparent OPVs with PCEs of 12% and AVTs of 20% are achieved, both on rigid and flexible substrates. To demonstrate the generality, this strategy is also used in three different active layers.