Harvesting energy directly from sunlight using photovoltaic technology is considered to be one of the most important ways to address the energy and environmental problem. Organic solar cells (OSCs) are a promising alternative for producing clean and renewable energy. The power conversion efficiency (PCE) of OSCs has improved rapidly to about 8% recently. But the PCE still needs to be improved for the demand of commercialization.

Typically, p-type semiconductor (donor) and n-type semiconductor (acceptor) are blended in a bulk hetero junction (BHJ) configuration as the core component for OSCs. Present studies of the OSCs are mainly focused on increasing PCE of the devices, and the key point to increase the PCE is the design and synthesis of high-efficiency conjugated polymer or small molecular donor and fullerene derivative acceptor materials.

Professor YANG Renqiang and his Advanced Organic Functional Materials & Devices Group at Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, have achieved an inspiring result in OSCs. Professor YANG’s group has developed a benzo[1,2-b:4,5-b’]dithiophene-based small molecular donor material DCA3T(BDT-T) for OSCs application. The device showed high PCE of 7.90% with V_oc=0.95 V, J_sc=11.86 mA/cm² and FF=70.0% employing traditional device structure ITO/PEDOT:PSS/DCA3T(BDT-T):PC₆₁BM/ Ca/Al after annealing. The result keeps ahead in the researching and development of OSCs.

Besides the development of solution process small molecular donor materials, professor YANG’s group also developed several narrow band gap donor polymers with PCE above 6% and series of acceptor materials with PCE comparable to the commercialized PCBM.

The above research has been carried out together with professor Han Young Woo at Pusan National University, Korea. This project was supported by Department of Science and Technology of Shandong Province (2010GGC10345) and the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (2010DFA52310) of Sino-Korea Joint Research Programs.

Reference:

1.       Bao, X.C; Sun, L.; Shen, W. F; Yang, C. P.; Chen, W. C. Yang, R. Q.*, “Facile  preparation of TiOX film as interface material for efficient inverted polymer solar cells”, J. Mater. Chem., DOI: 10.1039/c0xx00000x.

2.       Liangliang Han, Dongyu Zhang, Yuanhang Zhou, Ying Yang, Han Young Woo, Fali Bai, Renqiang Yang, Greenish yellow organic light emitting devices based on novel iridium complexes containing 2-cyclohexenyl-1-phenyl-1H-benzo[d] imidazole. Dyes and Pigments 99 (2013) 1010-1015.

3.       Hyosung Choi, Junghoon Lee, Wonho Lee, Seo-Jin Ko, Renqiang Yang, Jeong Chul Lee, Han Young Woob, Changduk Yang, Jin Young Kim, Acid-functionalized fullerenes used as interfacial layermaterials in inverted polymer solar cells. Organic Electronics 14 (2013) 3138-3145.

4.       Chen, X. H.; Qiao, S. L.; Du, Z. K.; Zhou, Y. H.; Yang, R. Q.*, Synthesis and characterization of functional thienyl-phosphine microporous polymers for carbon dioxide capture, Macromol. Rapid Commun., 2013, 34, 1181-1185.

Contact:

Professor YANG Renqiang

Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Email: yangrq (AT) qibebt.ac.cn