Toward efficient polymer solar cells with thick bulk heterojunction by introducing iridium complex as an aggregation reshaping auxiliary

Abstract The morphology control of thick bulk heterojunction (BHJ) polymer solar cells (PSCs) is an important factor to determine their power conversion efficiency (PCE). Particularly, during the building of phase separation, aggregation morphology plays a prominent role in the control of both horizonal and vertical gradient distribution of donor/acceptor (D/A) in thick BHJ. In this work, we introduced a novel iridium complex of (tfmppy)2Ir(tpip) into the active layer of PffBT4T-2OD: PC71BM as an “aggregation reshaping auxiliary” to form a long and narrow aggregation shape in both horizontal and vertical directions. Through characterizing the morphology of active layer in details, it was found that the combination of 5% (tfmppy)2Ir(tpip) assists PffBT4T-2OD aggregation shape with a 1: 2.5 aspect ratio while maintaining high crystallinity. In addition, the results showed that the (tfmppy)2Ir(tpip) facilitates efficient exciton dissociation and charge transport because of increased contacting area of D/A interface. As a result, the short circuit current (JSC) and fill factor (FF) performances were both improved contemporaneously, leading to a 20.3% enhancement in PCE.