Organic solar cells (OSCs) are recognized as one of the most promising renewable energy conversion technologies due to their advantages of mechanical flexibility, light weight, semi-transparency, and roll-to-roll printability. Among various material systems, all polymer solar cells (all-PSCs), consisting of both polymeric donor and polymeric acceptor materials, are of particular interest to the OPV community due to some of the distinctive features such as good mechanical properties and high morphological stability.

Graphical abstract [Photo/www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211285522009491]

Assistant Prof. Zhang Guangye and his team members from College of New Materials and New Energies, Shenzhen Technology University (SZTU), applied the sequential processing (SqP) method and used toluene as the processing solvent to prepare PSMA-based all-PSCs, which effectively improved the electron mobility and showed high power conversion efficiencies (PCE) of 15.8%. In addition, for the first time, they revealed the film formation process of all-polymer active layers prepared by the SqP method using the in situ UV-Vis absorption technique and investigated the vertical phase separation and the rate of exciton generation across the device using film-depth-dependent absorption spectroscopy, which systematically explained the effect of increased mobility on device parameters. Overall, the researchers demonstrated the first example of SqP high performance all-PSC using aromatic hydrocarbon solvent, which showed not only the success in combining SqP and efficient all-PSC materials but also the great potential for all-PSCs to be applied in the industry.

Material properties and film preparation [Photo/www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211285522009491]

An article about the work titled “An Improved Performance of All Polymer Solar Cells enabled by Sequential Processing via Non-halogenated Solvents” was published in Nano Energy (Q1, IF：19.069). Assistant Prof. Zhang Guangye is the first corresponding author and SZTU is the first corresponding affiliation. Postgraduate student Zhao Chaoyue is the first author and Associate Prof. Qiu Mingxia and Prof. Li Shunpu are the co-corresponding authors. Co-authors also include Associate Prof. You Peng, Associate Research Fellow Xie Chen, Research Assistant Wang Lihong and Huang Hui. The full text of the article can be found at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211285522009491.

In situ UV-Vis absorption [Photo/www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211285522009491]

What’s worth mentioning is that the SZTU researchers applied the SqP method to fabricate All-PSCs from an aromatic hydrocarbon solvent, toluene, and obtained PCE up to 17.0%, which reached the maximum as of the date of publication. The full text of the latest work can be found at: https://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/27/17/5739.

Drafted by Daisy（姚琦）/ International Cooperation & Student Affairs Office

Revised by International Cooperation & Student Affairs Office

Edited by International Cooperation & Student Affairs Office