Efficiency Enhancement in Polymer Solar Cells With a Polar Small Molecule Both at Interface and in the Bulk Heterojunction Layer

The polar molecules, including ferroelectric materials with large dipole moments, have been applied as interfacial layers to increase the efficiency of organic solar cells by increasing the bounded charge separation, tuning the energy levels, etc. Here, we report a small polar molecule 2-cyano-3-(4-(diphenylamino) phenyl)acrylic acid (TPACA) that can be either blended in the active layer or at the polymer/electrode interface to increase the efficiency of organic solar cell devices after poling. It is found that the built-in potential of the device is increased by 0.2 V after poling under negative bias. Blending TPACA into the active layer has shown to be a universal method to increase the efficiency of polymer solar cells. The efficiency is increased by 30-90% for all the polymer:fullerene systems tested, with the highest efficiency reaching 7.83% for the poly [4,8-bis-(2-ethyl-hexyl-thiophene-5-yl)-benzo[1,2-b:4,5-b ´]dithiophene-2,6-diyl]-alt-[2-(2´-ethyl-hexanoyl)-thieno [3,4-b]thiophen-4,6-diyl]: [6,6]-phenyl-C₇₁ -butyric acid methyl ester (PBDTTT-CT:PC70BM) system.