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Non-fullerene acceptors with high crystallinity and photoluminescence quantum yield enable >20% efficiency organic solar cells

Nature Materials volume 24, pages 433–443 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

The rational design of non-fullerene acceptors (NFAs) with both high crystallinity and photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY) is of crucial importance for achieving high-efficiency and low-energy-loss organic solar cells (OSCs). However, increasing the crystallinity of an NFA tends to decrease its PLQY, which results in a high non-radiative energy loss in OSCs. Here we demonstrate that the crystallinity and PLQY of NFAs can be fine-tuned by asymmetrically adapting the branching position of alkyl chains on the thiophene unit of the L8-BO acceptor. It was found that L8-BO-C4, with 2-butyloctyl on one side and 4-butyldecyl on the other side, can simultaneously achieve high crystallinity and PLQY. A high efficiency of 20.42% (certified as 20.1%) with an open-circuit voltage of 0.894 V and a fill factor of 81.6% is achieved for the single-junction OSC. This work reveals how important the strategy of shifting the alkyl chain branching position is in developing high-performance NFAs for efficient OSCs.

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Fig. 1: Molecular structures, photophysical properties and photovoltaic properties of L8-BO-based NFAs.
Fig. 2: The impact of branched side-chain structures on the micromorphology of the as-cast neat acceptor films.
Fig. 3: Single-crystal structures and molecular packing properties of NFA neat films.
Fig. 4: Morphology characterization of the blend films.

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Data availability

Source data are provided with this paper. The remaining data are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request. The X-ray crystallographic coordinates for structures reported in this study have been deposited at the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre and are available free of charge with the following codes: L8-BO (CCDC 2005533), L8-BO-C1 (CCDC 2291924), L8-BO-C3 (CCDC 2291925) and L8-BO-C4 (CCDC 2291926).

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Acknowledgements

Y.S. appreciates the support from the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2022YFB4200400), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 52333005 and 51825301) and the Beijing Natural Science Foundation (Z230018). H.Y. appreciates the support from the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2019YFA0705900) funded by MOST, the Basic and Applied Research Major Program of Guangdong Province (No. 2019B030302007), National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC, No. 22075057), the Shen Zhen Technology and Innovation Commission through (Shenzhen Fundamental Research Program, JCYJ20200109140801751), the Hong Kong Research Grants Council (research fellow scheme RFS2021-6S05, RIF project R6021-18, CRF project C6023-19G, GRF project 16310019, 16310020, 16309221, 16309822), Hong Kong Innovation and Technology Commission (ITC-CNERC14SC01) and Foshan-HKUST (Project No. FSUST19-CAT0202), Zhongshan Municipal Bureau of Science and Technology (No. ZSST20SC02), Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Joint Laboratory (No. 2023B1212120003) and Tencent Xplorer Prize. H.Y.W. acknowledges the financial support from the National Research Foundation of Korea (2019R1A6A1A11044070). J.Y. acknowledges funding support from National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 62404191) and Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (No. 2023A1515111140 and No. 2024A1515012318). J.S. appreciates the support from the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program of China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. GZB20230919). We thank F. Liu and Y. Zhang for their assistance with photovoltaic module fabrication and the transient photocurrent and transient photovoltage measurements. The diabatization calculations and diabatic-state analysis were performed using the homemade software package Diabat, provided by W. Liang, Y. Zhao and Y. Wang from Xiamen University.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Chao Li, Jiali Song.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Chemistry, Beihang University, Beijing, China

    Chao Li, Jiali Song & Yanming Sun

  2. Department of Chemistry, Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Joint Laboratory of Optoelectronic and Magnetic Functional Materials, Energy Institute and Hong Kong Branch of Chinese National, Engineering Research Center for Tissue Restoration and Reconstructions, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China

    Chao Li & He Yan

  3. Hangzhou International Innovation Institute, Beihang University, Hangzhou, China

    Jiali Song & Yanming Sun

  4. Department of Chemistry, Shenzhen Grubbs Institute, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China

    Hanjian Lai & Feng He

  5. Department of Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden

    Huotian Zhang, Yuxuan Li & Feng Gao

  6. Department of Computing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China

    Rongkun Zhou & Chen Zhang

  7. Frontiers Science Center for Transformative Molecules, In-situ Center for Physical Science, and Center for Hydrogen Science, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

    Jinqiu Xu

  8. Dongguan Key Laboratory of Interdisciplinary Science for Advanced Materials and Large-Scale Scientific Facilities, School of Physical Sciences, Great Bay University, Dongguan, China

    Haodong Huang & Sha Liu

  9. School of Science and Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, China

    Liming Liu & Jun Yan

  10. State Key Laboratory for Modification of Chemical Fibers and Polymer Materials, Center for Advanced Low-dimension Materials, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Donghua University, Shanghai, China

    Jiaxin Gao & Zheng Tang

  11. Department of Chemistry, College of Science, KU-KIST Graduate School of Converging Science and Technology, Korea University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Min Hun Jee & Han Young Woo

  12. Faculty of Materials and Manufacturing, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing, China

    Zilong Zheng

  13. Institute of Functional Nano & Soft Materials (FUNSOM), Soochow University, Suzhou, China

    Xian-Kai Chen

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  1. Chao Li
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  2. Jiali Song
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  3. Hanjian Lai
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  20. Feng Gao
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Contributions

C.L. conceived the idea, designed and synthesized the L8-BO-Cn+1 acceptors. J.S. fabricated and characterized the devices and conducted the certification. H.L. and F.H. grew the single crystals and analysed the single-crystal structures of the L8-BO and L8-BO-Cn+1 acceptors. H.Z., Y.L. and F.G. performed the PLQY experiments and analysed the data. R.Z., Z.Z., X.-K.C. and C.Z. performed the theoretical calculations of the L8-BO and L8-BO-Cn+1 acceptors and analysed the data. J.X. helped to process and analyse the single-crystal and GIWAXS data. H.H., L.L., S.L. and J.Y. performed the temperature-dependent PL measurements and analysed the data. J.G. and Z.T. performed the EL and sEQE experiments and analysed the data. M.H.J. and H.Y.W. performed the GIWAXS characterizations and analysed the data. H.Y. and Y.S. supervised and directed this project. C.L., J.S., H.Y. and Y.S. wrote the manuscript. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Jiali Song, He Yan or Yanming Sun.

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Nature Materials thanks Hin-Lap Yip and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–127, Tables 1–18, Methods, Notes 1–5 and Refs. 1–82.

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Supplementary Data 1

Statistical source data for Supplementary Figs. 24, 43, 52 and 55a and Supplementary Tables 2, 4, 5, 11, 13 and 15.

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Source Data Fig. 4

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Source Data Table 1

Statistical source data.

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Li, C., Song, J., Lai, H. et al. Non-fullerene acceptors with high crystallinity and photoluminescence quantum yield enable >20% efficiency organic solar cells. Nat. Mater. 24, 433–443 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-024-02087-5

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