Research Progress on the Third Component Materials of Ternary Organic Solar Cells

As a type of solar cells, the costs of the construction of organic solar cells are much lower than silicon-based solar cells. Moreover, they also have greater potential than other solar cells in wearable electronic devices and flexible equipment. However, their energy conversion efficiency is not high. It is well known that use three materials to prepare the active layer instead of two may change this situation. The paper first intoduces the advantages and disadvantages of different kinds of solar cells and briefly summarizes the effect of third component. In this paper, the working principles of ternary organic solar cells are classified into different types according to different mechanism and briefly explained. Then the paper chooses some important results of the predecessors to briefly intoduce the development of ternary organic solar cells and some milestones in this domain. The paper also divides the third component into different types according to the molecular characteristics of the material and introduces some advantages of these kinds of materials.