Flexible, highly efficient all-polymer solar cells

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 6; no. 1; p. 8547
• Main Authors: Kim, Taesu, Kim, Jae-Han, Kang, Tae Eui, Lee, Changyeon, Kang, Hyunbum, Shin, Minkwan, Wang, Cheng, Ma, Biwu, Jeong, Unyong, Kim, Taek-Soo, Kim, Bumjoon J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 09.10.2015; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Pub. Group
• Subjects: 639/301/299/946; 639/638/455/303; Humanities and Social Sciences; MATERIALS SCIENCE; multidisciplinary; Polymers; Science; Science & Technology - Other Topics; Science (multidisciplinary); Solar cells; SOLAR ENERGY
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/ncomms9547

All-polymer solar cells have shown great potential as flexible and portable power generators. These devices should offer good mechanical endurance with high power-conversion efficiency for viability in commercial applications. In this work, we develop highly efficient and mechanically robust all-polymer solar cells that are based on the PBDTTTPD polymer donor and the P(NDI2HD-T) polymer acceptor. These systems exhibit high power-conversion efficiency of 6.64%. Also, the proposed all-polymer solar cells have even better performance than the control polymer-fullerene devices with phenyl-C 61 -butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) as the electron acceptor (6.12%). More importantly, our all-polymer solar cells exhibit dramatically enhanced strength and flexibility compared with polymer/PCBM devices, with 60- and 470-fold improvements in elongation at break and toughness, respectively. The superior mechanical properties of all-polymer solar cells afford greater tolerance to severe deformations than conventional polymer-fullerene solar cells, making them much better candidates for applications in flexible and portable devices. All-polymer solar cells have advantages over fullerene-based solar cells due to improved stability and tunable chemical and electronic properties. Here, Kim et al. develop highly efficient and robust solar cells based on PBDTTTPD and P(NDI2HD-T), highlighting their potential in flexible and portable electronics.