Phenanthroline-carbolong interface suppress chemical interactions with active layer enabling long-time stable organic solar cells

Xue Lai; Shiyan Chen; Xiaoyu Gu; Hanjian Lai; Yunpeng Wang; Yulin Zhu; Hui Wang; Jianfei Qu; Aung Ko Ko Kyaw; Haiping Xia; Feng He

doi:10.1038/s41467-023-39223-9

Phenanthroline-carbolong interface suppress chemical interactions with active layer enabling long-time stable organic solar cells

Nat Commun. 2023 Jun 16;14(1):3571. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-39223-9.

Authors

Xue Lai^#^{1

2}, Shiyan Chen^#², Xiaoyu Gu³, Hanjian Lai², Yunpeng Wang², Yulin Zhu², Hui Wang², Jianfei Qu², Aung Ko Ko Kyaw³, Haiping Xia^{4

5}, Feng He^{6

7}

Affiliations

¹ School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, 150001, China.
² Shenzhen Grubbs Institute and Department of Chemistry, Southern University of Science and Technology Shenzhen, Shenzhen, 518055, China.
³ Guangdong University Key Laboratory for Advanced Quantum Dot Displays and Lighting, and Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, 518055, China.
⁴ Shenzhen Grubbs Institute and Department of Chemistry, Southern University of Science and Technology Shenzhen, Shenzhen, 518055, China. [email protected].
⁵ Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Catalysis, Southern University of Science and Technology Shenzhen, Shenzhen, 518055, China. [email protected].
⁶ Shenzhen Grubbs Institute and Department of Chemistry, Southern University of Science and Technology Shenzhen, Shenzhen, 518055, China. [email protected].
⁷ Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Catalysis, Southern University of Science and Technology Shenzhen, Shenzhen, 518055, China. [email protected].

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

To restrain the chemical reaction at cathode interface of organic solar cells, two cathode interfacial materials are synthesized by connecting phenanthroline with carbolong unit. Consequently, the D18:L8-BO based organic solar cell with double-phenanthroline-carbolong achieve the highest efficiency of 18.2%. Double-phenanthroline-carbolong with larger steric hindrance and stronger electron-withdrawing property confirms to suppress the interfacial reaction with norfullerene acceptor, resulting the most stable device. Double-phenanthroline-carbolong based device can sustain 80% of its initial efficiency for 2170 h in dark N₂ atmosphere, 96 h under 85 ^oC and keep 68% initial efficiency after been illuminated for 2200 h, which are significantly better than bathocuproin based devices. Moreover, superb interfacial stability of double-phenanthroline-carbolong cathode interface enables thermal posttreatment of organic sub-cell in perovskite/organic tandem solar cells and obtained a remarkable efficiency of 21.7% with excellent thermal stability, which indicates the potentially wide application of phenanthroline-carbolong materials for stable and efficient solar device fabrications.

MeSH terms

Atmosphere*
Electrodes
Electrons
Phenanthrolines*

Substances

Phenanthrolines