Tuning Intermolecular Interactions With Solid Additives to Optimize Molecular Aggregation and Molecular Packing in All‐Polymer Solar Cells

All-polymer solar cells (all-PSCs) suffer from significant challenges of large-scale aggregation and phase separation due to poor compatibility between donor and acceptor polymers. In this study, we introduce volatile solid additives to regulate intermolecular interactions and improve blending miscibility, thereby controlling aggregation and phase separation. Both computational and experimental results reveal that the key to this regulation lies in the strong electrostatic potential coupling between the solid additive and the polymer acceptor. This selective interaction modulates the aggregation behavior during film deposition and thermal annealing, enabling a gradual phase evolution. Further analysis indicates that the strong electrostatic coupling reduces aggregate size and promotes more ordered molecular packing, ultimately optimizing the film morphology. As a result, all-PSCs based on PM6/PY-IT incorporating the solid additive 2-BDBF exhibit a significantly improved power conversion efficiency of 18.62%, representing an increase compared to 14.93% ender the control conditions. This work demonstrates that solid additives with engineered electrostatic interactions offer an effective strategy to tune intermolecular forces, optimize morphology evolution, and boost device performance in all-PSCs.

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Publication Details

Journal
Small Methods
Published
2026-02-15
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1002/smtd.202501821
Primary Topic
Organic Electronics and Photovoltaics
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00
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article

Tuning Intermolecular Interactions With Solid Additives to Optimize Molecular Aggregation and Molecular Packing in All‐Polymer Solar Cells

Hanyue Gao, Luzhuo Li, Zhongxiang Peng, Y. R. Shen et al.
Small Methods
Organic Electronics and Photovoltaics
article

Tuning Intermolecular Interactions With Solid Additives to Optimize Molecular Aggregation and Molecular Packing in All‐Polymer Solar Cells

Hanyue Gao, Luzhuo Li, Zhongxiang Peng, Y. R. Shen, Xianshao Zou, Qiang Zhang, Jianbin Zhong, Tonghui Wang, Jingyi Ren, Yanchun Han, Mingyu Zuo, Rui Zhang
article en

Abstract

All-polymer solar cells (all-PSCs) suffer from significant challenges of large-scale aggregation and phase separation due to poor compatibility between donor and acceptor polymers. In this study, we introduce volatile solid additives to regulate intermolecular interactions and improve blending miscibility, thereby controlling aggregation and phase separation. Both computational and experimental results reveal that the key to this regulation lies in the strong electrostatic potential coupling between the solid additive and the polymer acceptor. This selective interaction modulates the aggregation behavior during film deposition and thermal annealing, enabling a gradual phase evolution. Further analysis indicates that the strong electrostatic coupling reduces aggregate size and promotes more ordered molecular packing, ultimately optimizing the film morphology. As a result, all-PSCs based on PM6/PY-IT incorporating the solid additive 2-BDBF exhibit a significantly improved power conversion efficiency of 18.62%, representing an increase compared to 14.93% ender the control conditions. This work demonstrates that solid additives with engineered electrostatic interactions offer an effective strategy to tune intermolecular forces, optimize morphology evolution, and boost device performance in all-PSCs.

Small MethodsVol. 10(5)
University of Science and Technology of China (CN), Harbin Engineering University (CN), Jilin University (CN), Soochow University (CN), State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry (CN)
Affordable and clean energy
Openalex Percentile: Top 54%
Organic Electronics and Photovoltaics
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