Growing interests have been devoted to the design of polymer acceptors as potential replacement for fullerene derivatives for high-performance all polymer solar cells (all-PSCs). One key factor that ...is limiting the efficiency of all-PSCs is the low fill factor (FF) (normally <0.65), which is strongly correlated with the mobility and film morphology of polymer:polymer blends. In this work, we find a facile method to modulate the crystallinity of the well-known naphthalene diimide (NDI) based polymer N2200, by replacing a certain amount of bithiophene (2T) units in the N2200 backbone by single thiophene (T) units and synthesizing a series of random polymers PNDI-Tx, where x is the percentage of the single T. The acceptor PNDI-T10 is properly miscible with the low band gap donor polymer PTB7-Th, and the nanostructured blend promotes efficient exciton dissociation and charge transport. Solvent annealing (SA) enables higher hole and electron mobilities, and further suppresses the bimolecular recombination. As expected, the PTB7-Th:PNDI-T10 solar cells attain a high PCE of 7.6%, which is a 2-fold increase compared to that of PTB7-Th:N2200 solar cells. The FF of 0.71 reaches the highest value among all-PSCs to date. Our work demonstrates a rational design for fine-tuned crystallinity of polymer acceptors, and reveals the high potential of all-PSCs through structure and morphology engineering of semicrystalline polymer:polymer blends.
All‐polymer solar cells (all‐PSCs) based on n‐ and p‐type polymers have emerged as promising alternatives to fullerene‐based solar cells due to their unique advantages such as good chemical and ...electronic adjustability, and better thermal and photochemical stabilities. Rapid advances have been made in the development of n‐type polymers consisting of various electron acceptor units for all‐PSCs. So far, more than 200 n‐type polymer acceptors have been reported. In the last seven years, the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of all‐PSCs rapidly increased and has now surpassed 10%, meaning they are approaching the performance of state‐of‐the‐art solar cells using fullerene derivatives as acceptors. This review discusses the design criteria, synthesis, and structure–property relationships of n‐type polymers that have been used in all‐PSCs. Additionally, it highlights the recent progress toward photovoltaic performance enhancement of binary, ternary, and tandem all‐PSCs. Finally, the challenges and prospects for further development of all‐PSCs are briefly considered.
The rapid development of n‐type polymers has boosted the efficiency of all‐polymer solar cells, which has improved from 2% to 10% in only seven years. There is a strong need to summarize the design criteria, synthesis, structure–property relationships and recent advances of n‐type polymers, which is addressed in this review. Moreover, the challenges and prospects for further development of all‐PSCs are briefly discussed.
Driven by the potential advantages and promising applications of organic solar cells, donor‐acceptor (D‐A) polymers have been intensively investigated in the past years. One of the strong ...electron‐withdrawing groups that were widely used as acceptors for the construction of D‐A polymers for applications in polymer solar cells and FETs is isoindigo. The isoindigo‐based polymer solar cells have reached efficiencies up to ∼7% and hole mobilities as high as 3.62 cm2 V−1 s−1 have been realized by FETs based on isoindigo polymers. Over one hundred isoindigo‐based small molecules and polymers have been developed in only three years. This review is an attempt to summarize the structures and properties of the isoindigo‐based polymers and small molecules that have been reported in the literature since their inception in 2010. Focus has been given only to the syntheses and device performances of those polymers and small molecules that were designed for use in solar cells and FETs. Attempt has been made to deduce structure‐property relationships that would guide the design of isoindigo‐based materials. It is expected that this review will present useful guidelines for the design of efficient isoindigo‐based materials for applications in solar cells and FETs.
This review summarizes isoindigobased polymers and small molecules for bulk‐heterojunction solar cells and field‐effect transistors (FETs). The structure‐property relationships are deduced based on results from the literature and density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Isoindigo‐based materials are anticipated to play an important role in the development of solar cells and FETs due to their appropriate energy levels, high absorption coefficients, and mobility.
Light is one of the most important environmental cues regulating multiple aspects of plant growth and development, and abscisic acid (ABA) is a plant hormone that plays important roles during many ...phases of the plant life cycle and in plants' responses to various environmental stresses. How plants integrate the external light signal with endogenous ABA pathway for better adaptation and survival remains poorly understood. Here, we show that BBX21 (also known as SALT TOLERANCE HOMOLOG 2), a B-box (BBX) protein previously shown to positively regulate seedling photomorphogenesis, is also involved in ABA signaling. Our genetic data show that BBX21 may act upstream of several ABA INSENSITIVE (ABI) genes and ELONGATED HYPOCOTYL 5 (HY5) in ABA control of seed germination. Previous studies showed that HY5 acts as a direct activator of ABI5 expression, and that BBX21 interacts with HY5. We further demonstrate that BBX21 negatively regulates ABI5 expression by interfering with HY5 binding to the ABI5 promoter. In addition, ABI5 was shown to directly activate its own expression, whereas BBX21 negatively regulates this activity by directly interacting with ABI5. Together, our study indicates that BBX21 coordinates with HY5 and ABI5 on the ABI5 promoter and that these transcriptional regulators work in concert to integrate light and ABA signaling in Arabidopsis thaliana.
Integration of a third component into a single-junction polymer solar cell (PSC) is regarded as an attractive strategy to enhance the performance of PSCs. Although binary all-polymer solar cells ...(all-PSCs) have recently emerged with compelling power conversion efficiencies (PCEs), the PCEs of ternary all-PSCs still lag behind those of the state-of-the-art binary all-PSCs, and the advantages of ternary systems are not fully exploited. In this work, we realize high-performance ternary all-PSCs with record-breaking PCEs of 9% and high fill factors (FF) of over 0.7 for both conventional and inverted devices. The improved photovoltaic performance benefits from the synergistic effects of extended absorption, more efficient charge generation, optimal polymer orientations and suppressed recombination losses compared to the binary all-PSCs, as evidenced by a set of experimental techniques. The results provide new insights for developing high-performance ternary all-PSCs by choosing appropriate donor and acceptor polymers to overcome limitations in absorption, by affording good miscibility, and by benefiting from charge and energy transfer mechanisms for efficient charge generation.
A new, low-band-gap alternating copolymer consisting of terthiophene and isoindigo has been designed and synthesized. Solar cells based on this polymer and PC71BM show a power conversion efficiency ...of 6.3%, which is a record for polymer solar cells based on a polymer with an optical band gap below 1.5 eV. This work demonstrates the great potential of isoindigo moieties as electron-deficient units for building donor–acceptor-type polymers for high-performance polymer solar cells.
Here we report on the synthesis of two novel very low band gap (VLG) donor–acceptor polymers (E g ≤ 1 eV) and an oligomer based on the thiadiazoloquinoxaline acceptor. Both polymers demonstrate ...decent ambipolar mobilities, with P1 showing the best performance of ∼10–2 cm2 V–1 s–1 for p- and n-type operation. These polymers are among the lowest band gap polymers (≲0.7 eV) reported, with a neutral λmax = 1476 nm (P2), which is the farthest red-shifted λmax reported to date for a soluble processable polymer. Very little has been done to characterize the electrochromic aspects of VLG polymers; interestingly, these polymers actually show a bleaching of their neutral absorptions in the near-infrared region and have an electrochromic contrast up to 30% at a switching speed of 3 s.
High performance solar cells fabricated from an easily synthesized donor‐acceptor polymer show maximum power point up to 6.0 mW cm−2, with an open‐circuit voltage of 0.89 V, short‐circuit current ...density of 10.5 mA cm−2 and fill factor of 0.64, making this polymer a particularly promising candidate for high‐efficiency low‐cost polymer solar cells.
The breakup of turbulent liquid jets by cavitation bubbles was investigated by artificially introducing them by focusing laser light into the jet. The induced surface deformations and ejected liquid ...structures were characterized using shadowgraphy with a high-speed video camera. The flow velocity of the liquid jets, which were ejected from a 6 mm nozzle, was varied by adjusting the injection pressure from 1 to 5 bar. Deionized water and a dipropylene glycol–water mixture were used to compare the breakup of liquid jets with different surface tension and viscosity. Surface deformation and breakup were found to occur in two stages. One was early breakup of liquid strings into tiny droplets. This was followed by the formation of a larger structure separating into ligaments and larger drops. Averaged time-resolved one-dimensional plots were introduced and implemented to analyze breakup statistically, to address the problem of shot-to-shot variations in the breakup due to the turbulent condition of the jets. Bubble-induced breakup could easily be distinguished from spontaneous breakup with this method. Both the position of bubble formation and the injection pressure had an influence on the scale of the breakup. The deformation of the jet surface was highly affected by shear. The structure of the deformation became less intact when the surface tension was lower. The sizes of the drops produced during the second stage of breakup were analyzed. The bubble-induced breakup produced smaller drops than the spontaneous breakup at lower injection pressure. As expected, lower surface tension favored droplet detachment and smaller sized drops.
Graphic abstract
Organic solar cells are thought to suffer from poor thermal stability of the active layer nanostructure, a common belief that is based on the extensive work that has been carried out on ...fullerene-based systems. We show that a widely studied non-fullerene acceptor, the indacenodithienothiophene-based acceptor ITIC, crystallizes in a profoundly different way as compared to fullerenes. Although fullerenes are frozen below the glass-transition temperature T g of the photovoltaic blend, ITIC can undergo a glass-crystal transition considerably below its high T g of ∼180 °C. Nanoscopic crystallites of a low-temperature polymorph are able to form through a diffusion-limited crystallization process. The resulting fine-grained nanostructure does not evolve further with time and hence is characterized by a high degree of thermal stability. Instead, above T g, the low temperature polymorph melts, and micrometer-sized crystals of a high-temperature polymorph develop, enabled by more rapid diffusion and hence long-range mass transport. This leads to the same detrimental decrease in photovoltaic performance that is known to occur also in the case of fullerene-based blends. Besides explaining the superior thermal stability of non-fullerene blends at relatively high temperatures, our work introduces a new rationale for the design of bulk heterojunctions that is not based on the selection of high-T g materials per se but diffusion-limited crystallization. The planar structure of ITIC and potentially other non-fullerene acceptors readily facilitates the desired glass-crystal transition, which constitutes a significant advantage over fullerenes, and may pave the way for truly stable organic solar cells.
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