All polymer solar cells hold the promise to be entirely solution processable, which would make this technology perfectly suitable for large area photovoltaic applications because the active layers could be deposited at low cost using well established printing techniques. Achieving high power conversion efficiencies however proved to be tricky due to processing difficulties and the formation of unfavourable microstructures in the active layer. More recently however all-polymer solar cells achieved power conversion efficiencies exceeding 5%, which sparked interest in this exciting class of organic solar cells. Contrary to the popular fullerene based acceptors, conjugated polymers possess much higher absorption coefficients and the optical absorption range can be tuned by chemical modifications to the backbone, allowing a more efficient harvesting of photons.<br/><br/>In order to meet the various challenges and to achieve high efficiency all-polymer photovoltaics, it is crucial to understand what parameters govern processability, phase separation and device stability. In this paper, we will discuss how we gradually adjusted the solubility of a low bandgap donor polymer by introducing flexible and non-conjugated segments into its backbone. This synthetic modification allows to tune the aggregation behaviour of these new materials in all-polymer solar cells, leading to high device efficiencies and improved morphological control and stability.

Non-conjugated flexible linkers: A new approach to master blend morphology in all-polymer solar cells

251st National Meeting (2016)

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