In this work, we have designed and synthesized a series of triptycene-containing conjugated polymers to be employed as minority solar cell components to improve interfacial charge separation in conventional bulk heterojunction polymer photovoltaic devices composed of PTB7, Poly({4,8-bis[(2-ethylhexyl)oxy]benzo[1,2-b:4,5-b′]dithiophene-2,6-diyl}{3-fluoro-2-[(2-ethylhexyl)carbonyl]thieno[3,4-b]thiophenediyl}), and PC71BM ([6,6]-Phenyl C71 butyric acid methyl ester). We find that these tailored additives provide for robust interfacial properties of PTB7: PC71BM devices and minimize variances from processing and/or minor compositional differences. In these experiments, we fabricated PTB7: PC71BM polymer solar cells with our materials as additives. We observed that these dopants result in an improvement of efficiency, particularly short-circuit current. We have performed a statistical study varying multiple parameters and processing conditions and observed that the incorporation of the additives improves the overall PCE of devices having sub-optimal performances. The results illustrate how additives can solve the batch-to-batch reproducibility issue, which is crucial for the industrial production of the solar cells.

Triptycene-containing polymers as surfactant additives for organic photovoltaic devices

251st National Meeting (2016)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.