title: Highly efficient polymer solar cells by step-by-step optimizing donor molecular packing and acceptor redistribution.
abstract: The dynamic drying process of the active layer should play a vitally important role in determining the performance of polymer solar cells (PSCs). Donor molecular packing and acceptor redistribution can be optimized by two successive post-treatments on the active layer. The blend films were freshly prepared by spin-coating method and then immediately transferred to a covered glass Petri dish to allow self-assembly of the donor molecules. The films were then treated with methanol or PFN-methanol solution to adjust the acceptor redistribution. In this study, power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) of PSCs with PffBT4T-2OD:PC71BM as the active layer were improved from 6.74% to 8.75% by employing 80 min for self-assembly and 20 s of methanol soaking. The PCE was improved even further to 9.72% by inserting a PFN interfacial layer. The performance improvement was mainly attributed to the optimized PffBT4T-2OD molecular packing during the self-assembly process, ideal vertical phase separation driven by methanol soaking and efficient charge collection by insertion of a PFN interfacial layer. The molecular packing and vertical phase separation were characterized by grazing incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), respectively. The experimental results solidly supported the effectiveness of the step-by-step optimization strategy.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Luminescence and Optical Information, Ministry of Education, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, People's Republic of China. fjzhang@bjtu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Qianqian
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Luminescence and Optical Information, Ministry of Education, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, People's Republic of China. fjzhang@bjtu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Fujun
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2829-0735
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Luminescence and Optical Information, Ministry of Education, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, People's Republic of China. fjzhang@bjtu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Qiaoshi
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: An
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Luminescence and Optical Information, Ministry of Education, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, People's Republic of China. fjzhang@bjtu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Miao
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Luminescence and Optical Information, Ministry of Education, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, People's Republic of China. fjzhang@bjtu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Jian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Material Science and Technology, Guangxi Key Laboratory of Information Materials, Guilin University of Electronic Technology, 1 Jinji Road, Guilin 541004, Guangxi, People's Republic of China. jianzhang@guet.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Jian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhang