Subtle Balance Between Length Scale of Phase Separation and Domain Purification in Small-Molecule Bulk-Heterojunction Blends under Solvent Vapor Treatment

Miaomiao Li; Feng Liu; Xiangjian Wan; Wang Ni; Bin Kan; Huanran Feng; Qian Zhang; Xuan Yang; Yunchuang Wang; Yamin Zhang; Yan Shen; Thomas P Russell; Yongsheng Chen

doi:10.1002/adma.201502645

Subtle Balance Between Length Scale of Phase Separation and Domain Purification in Small-Molecule Bulk-Heterojunction Blends under Solvent Vapor Treatment

Adv Mater. 2015 Oct 28;27(40):6296-302. doi: 10.1002/adma.201502645. Epub 2015 Sep 2.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Functional Polymer Materials, Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemical Science and Engineering (Tianjin), Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology, Institute of Polymer Chemistry, College of Chemistry, Nankai University, Tianjin, 300071, China.
² Materials Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Berkeley, 94720, USA.
³ Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, School of Optical and Electronic Information, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, Hubei, China.
⁴ Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 01003, MA, USA.

PMID: 26333172
DOI: 10.1002/adma.201502645

Abstract

A series of solvents with different solubilities for DR3TBDTT and PC71 BM, and different boiling points, is used for solvent vapor annealing (SVA) treatment to systematically investigate the solvent-morphology-performance relationship. The presence of solvent molecules inside bulk-heterojunction (BHJ) thin films promotes the mobility of both donor and acceptor molecules, leading to crystallization and aggregation, which are important in modulating morphology.

Keywords: morphology; small-molecule-based solar cells; solvent vapor annealing.