Selenium Heterocyclic Electron Acceptor with Small Urbach Energy for As-Cast High-Performance Organic Solar Cells

J Am Chem Soc. 2020 Nov 4;142(44):18741-18745. doi: 10.1021/jacs.0c08557. Epub 2020 Oct 21.

Abstract

Typical organic photovoltaic materials show high Urbach energies (ca. 25-50 meV), which is considerably higher than those of their inorganic counterparts and limits further improvement in the device efficiency of organic solar cells (OSCs). In this study, we introduce a facile method of selenium substitution to reduce the Urbach energy of organic photovoltaic materials to 20.4 meV (Y6Se), which is the lowest value reported for high-performance organic photovoltaic materials and very close to those (ca. 15 meV) of typical inorganic/hybrid semiconductors, such as crystalline silicon, gallium nitride, and lead-halide perovskite. Next, OSCs based on Y6Se showed 17.7% efficiency, which is among the best results for OSCs and the record efficiency of as-cast single junction OSCs to date.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't