Perylenediimide-based Acceptors for OPV Applications

Abstract

Four new perylenediimides (PDIs) have been used as non-fullerene (NF) acceptors in solution-processed bulk heterojunction organic solar cells (OSC). Photovoltaic devices were fabricated using PTB7-Th as donor material. We investigated the effect of solvent vapor annealing (SVA) and thermal annealing on the performance of the fabricated inverted NF-OSCs. We found that solvent vapor annealing and thermal annealing of the active layer reduced the current density and therefore did not improve the performance of the fabricated solar cells. The highest performing cells are achieved using PTB7-Th:PDI-3 as an active blend with ZnO as the electron transport layer and MoO3 as the hole transport layer. Most solar cells based in PDIs produced open circuit voltages in the same range as those typical solar cells made from PC70BM.