Recent Advances of Imide-Functionalized Polymer Donors for Non-fullerene Solar Cells

Abstract

The first successful organic photovoltaic device was reported by Tang with a PCE of about 1% in a bilayer device. Because the short exciton diffusion length, the PCE of bilayer devices is rather lower. In 1995, Heeger introduced the concept of bulk heterojunction (BHJ) organic solar cells. These cells consist of a unique bicontinuous interpenetrating network of donor and acceptor materials, creating large interfacial areas that facilitate efficient exciton dissociation. Since then, the BHJ structure has become the standard architecture for OSCs. The PCBM, synthesized by Wudl, is the most common acceptor material in the era of fullerene OSCs. The design rules for polymer donors should be compatible with the properties of PCBM. Yu reported a family of narrow bandgap D-A copolymers called PTB, which have shown high efficiency and success in the fullerene OSCs. Due to the limited visible light absorption and morphological instability of fullerene, there has been a significant increase in research on non-fullerene electron acceptors. Zhan created a groundbreaking non-fullerene electron acceptor ITIC, which is the beginning of a new era for non-fullerene OSCs. Later, Zou developed high-performance narrow-bandgap Y6, which significantly boosted the efficiency of OSCs to over 19%. In non-fullerene OSCs, the most commonly used polymer donors are PM6 and D18, which were developed by Hou and Ding.

Keywords

Imide / Polymer donors / Organic solar cells / Synthetic routes / Polymer structure evolution

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