Physics

Small molecule

Nanotechnology

Organic chemistry

Energy conversion efficiency

Organic solar cell

Conjugated system

HOMO/LUMO

Engineering

Fullerene

Composite material

Chemistry

Materials science

Condensed matter physics

Acceptor

Thiophene

Molecule

Chemical engineering

Optoelectronics

Polymer

Biochemistry

Science China Materials

Synergistic optimization of donor-acceptor blend morphologyis a hurdle in the path of realizing efficient non-fullerene small-molecule organic solar cells (NFSM-OSCs) due to the anisotropic conjugated backbones of both donor and acceptor. Therefore, developing a facile molecular design strategy to effectively regulate the crystalline properties of photoactive materials, and thus, enable the optimization of blend morphology is of vital importance. In this study, a new donor molecule B1, comprising phenyl-substituted benzodithiophene (BDT) central unit, exhibits strong interaction with the non-fullerene acceptor BO-4Cl in comparison with its corresponding thiophene-substituted BDT-based material, BTR. As a result, the B1 is affected and induced from an edge-on to a face-on orientation by the acceptor, while the BTR and the acceptor behave individually for the similar molecular orientation in pristine and blend films according to grazing incidence wide angle X-ray scattering results. It means the donor-acceptor blend morphology is synergistically optimized in the B1 system, and the B1:BO-4Cl-based devices achieve an outstanding power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 15.3%, further certified to be 15.1% by the National Institute of Metrology, China. Our results demonstrate a simple and effective strategy to improve the crystalline properties of the donor molecule as well as synergistically optimize the morphology of the all-small-molecule system, leading to the high-performance NFSM-OSCs.

15.3% efficiency all-small-molecule organic solar cells enabled by symmetric phenyl substitution