Enhancing the Performance of Organic Solar Cells by Prolonging the Lifetime of Photogenerated Excitons

Abstract

Exciton lifetime (τ) is crucial for the migration of excitons to donor/acceptor interfaces for subsequent charge separation in organic solar cells (OSCs); however, obvious prolongation of τ has rarely been achieved. Here, by introducing a solid additive 9-fluorenone-1-carboxylic acid (FCA) into the active layer, which comprises a nonfullerene acceptor, 3,9-bis(2-methylene-((3-(1,1-dicyanomethylene)-6/7-methyl)-indanone))-5,5,11,11-tetrakis(4-hexylphenyl)-dithieno[2,3-d:2',3'-d']-s-indaceno[1,2-b:5,6-b']dithiophene (IT-M), τ is substantially prolonged from 491 to 928 ps, together with obvious increases in fluorescence intensity and quantum yield. Time-resolved transient infrared spectra indicate the presence of an intermolecular vibrational coupling between the electronic excited state of IT-M and the electronic ground state of FCA, which is first observed here and which can suppress the internal conversion process. IT-M-based OSCs display an improved short-circuit current and fill factor after the addition of FCA. Thus, the power conversion efficiency is increased, particularly for devices with a large donor/acceptor ratio of 1:4, whose efficiency is increased by 56%. This study describes a novel method, which is also applicable to other nonfullerene acceptors, for further improving the performance of OSCs without affecting their morphology and light absorption properties.