Recent research progress of all-polymer solar cells based on PSMA-type polymer acceptors

Summary

All-polymer solar cells (all-PSCs) have garnered significant interest due to their unique advantages, including significantly improved device stability and mechanical stretchability compared with other types of organic solar cells. Recently, all-PSCs have achieved remarkable improvements in photovoltaic performance. Crucial to this advancement is the development of polymerized small-molecule acceptors (PSMAs) since 2017. First, we describe the development of various polymer acceptors (P_As) and discuss the main limitations of these P_As used in all-PSCs. Then, we focus our discussion on the concept of PSMA and summarize the design criteria of PSMAs as well as their structure-morphology-performance relationships. Additionally, we describe some typical strategies, including molecular mass control, processing conditions, polymer donor selection, and ternary strategy, to modulate morphology. Relevant photophysics research in all-PSCs is reviewed. Finally, we provide a concise summary, propose some research directions and opinions, and highlight key issues that need to be overcome to achieve high-performance all-PSCs.