Toward More Efficient Organic Solar Cells: A Detailed Study of Loss Pathway and Its Impact on Overall Device Performance in Low-Offset Organic Solar Cells

Low-offset organic solar cell systems have attracted great interest since nonfullerene acceptors came into the picture. While numerous studies have focused on the charge generation process in these low-offset systems, only a few studies have focused on the details of each loss channel in the charge generation process and their impact on the overall device performance. Here, several nonfullerene acceptors are blended with the same polymer donor to form a series of low-offset organic solar cell systems where significant variation in device performance is observed. Through detailed analyses of loss pathways, it is found that: i) the donor:acceptor interfaces of PM6:Y6 and PM6:TPT10 are close to the optimum energetic condition, ii) energetics at the donor:acceptor interface are the most important factor to the overall device performance, iii) exciton dissociation yield can be field-dependent owing to the sufficiently small energetic offset at the donor:acceptor interface, and iv) the change in substituents in the terminal group of Y-series acceptors in this work mainly affects energetics at the donor:acceptor interface instead of the interface density in the active layer. In general, this work presents a path toward more efficient organic solar cells.