A Tandem Organic Solar Cell with PCE of 14.52% Employing Subcells with the Same Polymer Donor and Two Absorption Complementary Acceptors

The tandem structure is an efficient way to simultaneously tackle absorption and thermalization losses of the single junction solar cells. In this work, a high-performance tandem organic solar cell (OSC) using two subcells with the same donor poly[(2,6-(4,8-bis(5-(2-ethylhexyl)thiophen-2-yl)-benzo[1,2-b:4,5-b']dithiophene))-alt-(5,5-(1',3'-di-2-thienyl-5',7'-bis(2-ethylhexyl)benzo[1',2'-c:4',5'-c']dithiophene-4,8-dione))] (PBDB-T) and two acceptors, F-M and 2,9-bis(2-methylene-(3(1,1-dicyanomethylene)benz[f ]indanone))7,12-dihydro-(4,4,10,10-tetrakis(4-hexylphenyl)-5,11-diocthylthieno[3',2':4,5]cyclopenta[1,2-b]thieno[2 '',3 '':3',4']cyclopenta[1',2':4,5]thieno[2,3-f][1]benzothiophene (NNBDT), with complementary absorptions is demonstrated. The two subcells show high V-oc with value of 0.99 V for the front cell and 0.86 V for the rear cell, which is the prerequisite for obtaining high V-oc of their series-connected tandem device. Although there is much absorption overlap for the subcells, a decent J(sc) of the tandem cell is still obtained owing to the complementary absorption of the two acceptors in a wide range. With systematic device optimizations, a best power conversion efficiency of 14.52% is achieved for the tandem device, with a high V-oc of 1.82 V, a notable FF of 74.7%, and a decent J(sc) of 10.68 mA cm(-2). This work demonstrates a promising strategy of fabricating high-efficiency tandem OSCs through elaborate selection of the active layer materials in each subcell and tradeoff of the V-oc and J(sc) of the tandem cells.