Control of Effective Elastomer Density Enables Mechanically Robust and High‐Efficiency Intrinsically Stretchable Organic Solar Cells
Intrinsically stretchable organic solar cells (IS-OSCs) are highly promising for next-generation wearable electronics. The incorporation of thermoplastic elastomers (TPEs) provides a cost-effective strategy to improve mechanical compliance. However, the influence of TPE structural diversity on device performance has been largely overlooked. In this work, the concept of effective elastomer density (D<sub>e</sub>) is introduced as a unified molecular descriptor to quantitatively evaluate how elastomer structures affect IS-OSC morphology and functionality. It is demonstrated that increasing D<sub>e</sub> enhances stretchability by inducing domain coarsening and surface roughening in amorphous regions, but simultaneously prolongs exciton lifetimes and suppresses charge extraction and transport. Notably, IS-OSCs achieve an optimal balance at a critical D<sub>e</sub> of 1.5 mol m<sup>-3</sup>, delivering a high initial power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 14.3% and retaining 80% of the initial PCE at 30.6% strain, representing the best performance reported to date for IS-OSCs employing the elastomer-plasticization strategy. This descriptor-based framework provides a predictive and generalizable guideline for the molecular design of elastomers in stretchable optoelectronic devices.
Authors
- Maojie Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6102-5856)
- Xiaoyan Du (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0737-2988)
- Fengbo Sun
- Xinxin Xia (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-5767-3758)
- Yujie Xu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0001-9876-8039)
- Xiaotao Hao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0197-6545)
- Long Ye (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5884-0083)
- Wenqing Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2551-6375)
- Hang Yin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5479-7698)
- Hao Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9131-0199)
- Mengfei Xiao
- Ming Sun (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1533-3257)
- Chen Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-7553-3738)
- Zhen Fu
Institutions
- Shandong University (CN)
- Tianjin University (CN)
- The University of Melbourne (AU)
- State Key Laboratory of Crystal Materials
Publication Details
- Journal
- Advanced Materials
- Published
- 2025-09-23
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.202514031
- Citations
- 5
- Primary Topic
- Organic Electronics and Photovoltaics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 3.65