Reported by Hafiz Bilal Naveed & Prof. Wei Ma

Ternary strategy in bulk heterojunction (BHJ) organic solar cells (OSCs) involving non-fullerene acceptors (NFAs) has intimate prospect of maximizing solar harvesting while it still remains most promising and inexpensive solution of sustainable energy source. NFA based ternary devices are subject to very complex nanostructures and multifarious phase separation yielding low contrast for its characterization. Inadequate information at nano-scale was obstructing further growth of the device. Driven by the thermodynamic, electronic and optical interactions of organic materials, Prof. Ma Wei’s team has reported “Four Models” for the predictable organization of guest NFA towards optimizing the nanostructures of NFA based ternary OSCs.

Prof. Ma as a corresponding/leading author along with his second year PhD student Hafiz Bilal Naveed as a first author has published their paper in JOULE titled as, “Miscibility Driven Optimization of Nanostructures in Ternary Organic Solar Cells using Non-Fullerene Acceptors”.  The paper presents a guide for efficient charge transfer using miscible guest NFA and host donor; efficient charge transport using non-miscible guest NFA and host donor; efficient quantum yield of harvested solar energy using low miscibility between all three components; and balanced generation and transport of charges for their proficient collection using two miscible NFAs – resulting in overall improvement of host binary device with optimal guest NFA incorporation. This contribution from Prof. Ma’s group in the field of organic photovoltaic (OPV) systems would translate in developing next-generation devices beyond currently accepted limits.

DOI/Paper link: http://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(18)30056-4