P3HT Molecular Weight Determines the Performance of P3HT:O-IDTBR Solar Cells
Type
ArticleAuthors
Khan, Jafar IqbalAshraf, Raja
Alamoudi, Maha A

Nabi, Mohammed N.
Mohammed, Hamza N.
Wadsworth, Andrew
Firdaus, Yuliar

Zhang, Weimin
Anthopoulos, Thomas D.

McCulloch, Iain

Laquai, Frédéric

KAUST Department
Chemical Science ProgramKAUST Solar Center (KSC)
Material Science and Engineering Program
Physical Science and Engineering (PSE) Division
The KAUST School
KAUST Grant Number
FCS/1/3321/01Date
2019-05-17Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/652875
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Large-scale production of organic solar modules requires low-cost and reliable materials with reproducible batch-to-batch properties. In case of polymers, their (photo)physical properties depend strongly on the polymers’ molecular weight. Here, we study the impact of the molecular weight of the donor polymer poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) on the photophysics in blends with a recently-developed rhodanine-endcapped indacenodithiophene non-fullerene acceptor (IDTBR), a bulk heterojunction system that can potentially fulfill the aforementioned criteria for large-scale production. We find that the power conversion efficiency (PCE) increases when the weight-average molecular weight (MW) is increased from 17kDa (PCE: 4.0%) to 34 kDa (PCE: 6.6%), while a further increase in MW leads to a reduced PCE of 4.4%. We demonstrate that the charge generation efficiency, as estimated from time-delayed collection field (TDCF) experiments, varies with the P3HT molecular weight and is the reason for the differences in photocurrent and device performance. Our findings provide insight into the fundamental photophysical reasons of the molecular weight dependence of the power conversion efficiency, which has to be taken into account when using polymer-based non-fullerene acceptor blends in solar cell devices and modules.Citation
Khan JI, Ashraf RS, Alamoudi MA, Nabi MN, Mohammed HN, et al. (2019) P3HT Molecular Weight Determines the Performance of P3HT:O-IDTBR Solar Cells. Solar RRL. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/solr.201900023.Sponsors
The research reported in this publication was supported by the Office of Sponsored Research (OSR) under the Grant Agreement FCS/1/3321/01 and by baseline funding from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). M. A. A. is grateful to Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) for funding received towards the PhD. H.N.M. thanks the KAUST SRSI program for support.J.I.K. and R.S.A. contributed equally to the work.Publisher
WileyJournal
Solar RRLAdditional Links
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/solr.201900023ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1002/solr.201900023