120th General Meeting of the KCS

Type Symposium
Area Special Symposium by Leading Mid-career Polymer Scientists
Room No. Room 302+303
Time THU 15:30-:
Code POLY2-5
Subject Impact of Side Chain Engineering and Molecular Weight Control of Polymers in Performance of All-Polymer Solar Cells
Authors Bumjoon Kim
Department of Chemical Engineering & Biotechnology, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Korea
Abstract All-polymer solar cells (all-PSCs) often suffer from low short-circuit current density and fill factor, which is mainly associated with inefficient exciton dissociation at the donor/acceptor interface and electron transport in the device. This feature results from anisotropic structure in both polymer donor and polymer acceptor, which is different from spherical shaped fullerenes. In this talk, we will address our recent work in developing the correlation between the polymer microstructure, BHJ morphology and the photovoltaic properties of high performance all-PSCs. As model systems of modulating the molecular weight and the alkyl side chain of polymers, the polymer microstructure and the BHJ blend morphology of all-PSCs are systematically controlled, and thereby we produced high-performance all-PSCs system with over 7% efficiency. More importantly, our all-PSCs exhibited dramatically enhanced strength and flexibility compared with polymer/PCBM devices, with 60x and 470x improvements in elongation at break and toughness, respectively. The superior mechanical properties of all-PSCs afford greater tolerance to severe deformations than conventional polymer-fullerene solar cells, making them much better candidates for applications in flexible and portable devices.
E-mail bumjoonkim@kaist.ac.kr