Enhancing the performance of non-fullerene solar cells with polymer acceptors containing large-sized aromatic units

In this work, we develop four diketopyrrolopyrrole-based polymer acceptors for application in polymer-polymer solar cells. The polymer acceptors contain different-sized aromatic units, from small thiophene to benzodithiophene and large alkylthio-benzodithiophene units. Although the polymer acceptor with large-sized groups shows small LUMO offset and low energy loss when blended with the donor polymer PTB7-Th, the corresponding solar cells can achieve a high power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 3.1% due to high photocurrent. In contrast, the polymer acceptor with small thiophene units only provides a low PCE of 0.14% in solar cells. These results indicate that polymer acceptors with large-sized aromatic units can be potentially used into high performance non-fullerene solar cells.