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. 2022 Mar 30;12(16):10029-10036.
doi: 10.1039/d2ra00540a. eCollection 2022 Mar 25.

Design of ternary additive for organic photovoltaics: a cautionary tale

Chithiravel Sundaresan  1   2 , Pierre Josse  1   3 , Mário C Vebber  1 , Jaclyn Brusso  3 , Jianping Lu  2 , Ye Tao  2 , Salima Alem  2 , Benoît H Lessard  1   4
Affiliations

Design of ternary additive for organic photovoltaics: a cautionary tale

Chithiravel Sundaresan et al. RSC Adv. .

Abstract

Silicon phthalocyanines as ternary additives are a promising way to increase the performance of organic photovoltaics. The miscibility of the additive and the donor polymer plays a significant role in the enhancement of the device performance, therefore, ternary additives can be designed to better interact with the conjugated polymer. We synthesized N-9'-heptadecanyl-2,7-carbazole functionalized SiPc ((CBzPho)2-SiPc), a ternary additive with increased miscibility in poly[N-90-heptadecanyl-2,7-carbazole-alt-5,5-(4',7'-di-2-thienyl-2',1',3'-benzothiadiazole)] (PCDTBT). The resulting additive was included into PCDTBT and [6,6]-phenyl C71 butyric acid methyl ester as bulk (PC71BM) heterojunction OPV devices as a ternary additive. While the (CBzPho)2-SiPc demonstrated strong EQE >30% contribution in the range of 650-730 nm, the overall performance was reduced because (CBzPho)2-SiPc acted as a hole trap due to its high-lying HOMO energy level. This study demonstrates the importance of the solubility, miscibility, and energy level engineering of the ternary additive when designing organic photovoltaic devices.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have no conflicts to declare.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1. Synthesis of bis(N-9′-heptadecanyl-2,7-carbazole-phenoxy) silicon phthalocyanine ((CBzPhO)2-SiPc) in addition to the chemical structure of PCDTBT and PC71BM.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2. (a) UV-Vis spectra of (CBzPho)2-SiPc in a chloroform solution (dashed line) and thin film (solid line), (b) redox scans of cyclic voltammograms for (CBzPho)2-SiPc.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3. Tapping mode AFM height (above) and corresponding phase (below) images of PCDTBT:PC71BM:(CBzPho)2-SiPc ternary blends with various (CBzPho)2-SiPc contents deposited by blade-coating (a and d) 0 wt% (rms roughness = 0.71 nm); (b and e) 5 wt% (rms roughness = 0.91 nm); (c and f) 10 wt% (rms roughness = 2.5 nm).
Fig. 4
Fig. 4. (a) J–V characteristics of PCDTBT:PC71BM:(CBzPho)2-SiPc ternary BHJ OPV devices fabricated by blade coating on ITO/PET substrates, (b) corresponding EQE curves and (c) UV-Vis total absorption spectra of OPV devices.
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