A molecular nematic liquid crystalline material for high-performance organic photovoltaics

Kuan Sun; Zeyun Xiao; Shirong Lu; Wojciech Zajaczkowski; Wojciech Pisula; Eric Hanssen; Jonathan M White; Rachel M Williamson; Jegadesan Subbiah; Jianyong Ouyang; Andrew B Holmes; Wallace WH Wong; David J Jones

Journal article

A molecular nematic liquid crystalline material for high-performance organic photovoltaics

Kuan Sun, Zeyun Xiao, Shirong Lu, Wojciech Zajaczkowski, Wojciech Pisula, Eric Hanssen, Jonathan M White, Rachel M Williamson, Jegadesan Subbiah, Jianyong Ouyang, Andrew B Holmes, Wallace WH Wong, David J Jones

NATURE COMMUNICATIONS | NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP | Published : 2015

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms7013

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Abstract

Solution-processed organic photovoltaic cells (OPVs) hold great promise to enable roll-to-roll printing of environmentally friendly, mechanically flexible and cost-effective photovoltaic devices. Nevertheless, many high-performing systems show best power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) with a thin active layer (thickness is ~100 nm) that is difficult to translate to roll-to-roll processing with high reproducibility. Here we report a new molecular donor, benzodithiophene terthiophene rhodanine (BTR), which exhibits good processability, nematic liquid crystalline behaviour and excellent optoelectronic properties. A maximum PCE of 9.3% is achieved under AM 1.5G solar irradiation, with fill facto..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Wallace Wong Author Chemistry

Andrew Holmes Author Bio21 Institute

Jonathan White Author Chemistry

Jegadesan Subbiah Author Chemistry

Eric Hanssen Author Bio21 Institute

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Funding Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Victorian Organic Solar Cell Consortium with funding from the Victorian Government ( DSDBI) and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency ( ARENA) through grants 2- A018, 1- GER001 and the ARENA funded Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics. The research was also supported by the Ministry of Education, Singapore ( R- 284- 000- 113- 112). W. W. H. W. is supported by an ARC Future Fellowship ( FT130100500). We acknowledge the Monash Centre for Electron Microscopy ( MCEM) at Monash University, the MX2 beamline at the Australian Synchrotron, CSIRO, Department of Materials Science & Engineering ( DMSE) at National University of Singapore ( NUS) and Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore ( SERIS) for sharing their facilities with us. We acknowledge Dr Doojin Vak at CSIRO, Dr Xi- Ya Fang at MCEM, Henche Kuan, Yeow Koon Liew, Drs Lei Chen and Pengcheng Li at DMSE NUS and Fang Jeng Lim at SERIS for experiment assistance and in- depth discussions.