A new chlorinated non-fullerene acceptor based organic photovoltaic cells over 12% efficiency

The method to fluorinate the terminal group has achieved remarkable success and been widely used to fine-tune the intrinsic properties of organic acceptor materials. Referring to chlorination, however, it gets less attention and remains ambiguous effect on organic photovoltaic (OPV) cells. Herein, a new non-fullerene acceptor named Y19 was reported with benzotriazole as the electron-deficient core and 2Cl-ICs as the strong electron-withdrawing end groups. Y19 exhibits a wide film absorption band from 600 nm to 948 nm and low LUMO (the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital) energy level of −3.95 eV Photovoltaic devices based on PM6:Y19 show high-power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 12.76 % with high open-circuit voltage (Voc) of 0.84 V, short-circuit current density (Jsc) of 22.38 mA/cm2 and fill factor (FF) of 68.18 %. Broad external quantum efficiency (EQE) response of over 60 % in the range of 480–860 nm can be obtained. This study demonstrates that chlorination, as a low-cost molecular design strategy, has its own superiorities to improve device performance and promote the potential application in OPV.