Effects of terminal groups in third components on performance of organic solar cells

Ternary blends have been considered as an effective approach to improve power conversion efficiency (PCE) of organic solar cells (OSCs). Among them, the fullerene-containing ternary OSCs have been studied extensively, and their PCEs are as high as over 14%. However, all non-fullerene acceptor ternary OSCs are still limited by their relatively lower PCEs. In this work, we used wide-bandgap benzodithiophene-difluorobenzotriazole copolymer FTAZ as the donor, low-bandgap fused-ring electron acceptor (FREA), fused tris(thienothiophene) end-capped by fluorinated 1,1-dicyanomethylene-3-indanone (FOIC) as acceptor, and two medium-bandgap FREAs, indaceno-dithiophene endcapped by 1,1-dicyanomethylene-3-indanone (IDT-IC) and indacenodithiophene end-capped by 1,1-dicyanomethylene-3-benzoindanone (IDT-NC), as the third components to fabricate the ternary blends FTAZ:FOIC:IDT-IC and FTAZ:FOIC:IDT-NC, and investigated the effects of the third components on the performance of ternary OSCs. Both IDT-IC and IDT-NC are based on the same indacenodithiophene core but contain different terminal groups (phenyl and naphthyl). Relative to IDT-IC with phenyl terminal groups, IDT-NC with naphthyl terminal groups has extended π-conjugation, down-shifted lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO), red-shifted absorption and higher electron mobility. The binary devices based on the FTAZ:FOIC, FTAZ:IDT-IC and FTAZ:IDT-NC blends exhibit PCEs of 9.73%, 7.48% and 7.68%, respectively. Compared with corresponding binary devices, both ternary devices based on FTAZ:FOIC:IDT-IC and FTAZ:FOIC:IDT-NC exhibit better photovoltaic performances. When the IDT-IC weight ratio in acceptors is 50%, the FTAZ:FOIC:IDT-IC ternary devices exhibit the best PCE of 11.2%. The ternary-blend OSCs yield simultaneously improved open-circuit voltage (V_OC), short-circuit current density (J_SC) and fill factor (FF) compared with the binary devices based on FTAZ:FOIC. The higher V_OC is attributed to the higher LUMO energy level of IDT-IC compared with FOIC. The improved J_SC is attributed to the complementary absorption of FOIC and IDT-IC. The introduction of IDT-IC improves blend morphology and charge transport, leading to higher FF. The FTAZ:FOIC:IDT-NC system yields a higher PCE of 10.4% relative to the binary devices based on FTAZ:FOIC as the active layer. However, the PCE of the FTAZ:FOIC:IDT-NC-based ternary devices is lower than that of the FTAZ:FOIC:IDT-IC-based ternary devices. Compared with the binary devices based on FTAZ:FOIC, in FTAZ:FOIC:IDT-NC-based ternary devices, as the ratio of the third component increases, the V_OC increases due to the higher LUMO energy level of IDT-NC, the FF increases due to optimized morphology and improved charge transport, while the J_SC decreases due to the overlapped absorption of FOIC and IDT-NC. The terminal groups in the third components affect the performance of the ternary OSCs. The lower LUMO. energy level of IDT-NC is responsible for the lower V_OC of the FTAZ:FOIC:IDT-NC devices. The red-shifted absorption of IDT-NC leads to the overlapping of the absorption spectra of IDT-NC and FOIC and lower J_SC. On the other hand, replacing the phenyl terminal groups by the naphthyl terminal groups influences the π-π packing and charge transport. The FTAZ:FOIC:IDT-NC blend exhibits higher electron mobility and more balanced charge transport than FTAZ:FOIC:IDT-IC, leading to a higher FF.