Widely Applicable n-Type Molecular Doping for Enhanced Photovoltaic Performance of All-Polymer Solar Cells

Abstract

A widely applicable doping design for emerging nonfullerene solar cells would be an efficient strategy in order to further improve device photovoltaic performance. Herein, a family of compound TBAX (TBA= tetrabutylammonium, X = F, Cl, Br, or I, containing Lewis base anions are considered as efficient n-dopants for improving polymer-polymer solar cells (all-PSCs) performance. In all cases, significantly increased fill factor (FF) and slightly increased short-circuit current density (J_sc) are observed, leading to a best PCE of 7.0% for all-PSCs compared to that of 5.8% in undoped devices. The improvement may be attributed to interaction between different anions X^- (X = F, Cl, Br, and I) in TBAX with the polymer acceptor. We reveal that adding TBAX at relatively low content does not have a significantly impact on blend morphology, while it can reduce the work function (WF) of the electron acceptor. We find this simple and solution processable n-type doping can efficiently restrain charge recombination in all-polymer solar cell devices, resulting in improved FF and J_sc. More importantly, our findings may provide new protocles and insights using n-type molecular dopants in improving the performance of current polymer-polymer solar cells.