Ternary blend bulk heterojunction polymer solar cells based on double donors and single acceptor with ultra wideband absorption

We demonstrated the simple device configuration and low-cost processing technology of single-junction BHJ cells while inheriting the major benefit of incorporating multiple polymers in tandem cells. Ternary blend bulk heterojunction (BHJ) solar cells with high-band-gap PBDTTPD and low-band-gap PC₂₀ BDTDPP as donor polymers, with phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PC₆₁ BM) as acceptor were studied. In this ternary blend BHJ, free charge carriers travel through their corresponding donor-polymer-linked channels and fullerene-enriched domain to the electrodes, and the ternary blend BHJ solar cells showed power conversion efficiencies of up to 5.16%. This added to the growing evidence that the use of ternary blends is a general and effective strategy for producing efficient organic photovoltaics manufactured in a single active-layer processing step.