A systematical investigation of non-fullerene solar cells based on diketopyrrolopyrrole polymers as electron donor

•Diketopyrrolopyrrole-based polymers as donor and a perylene bisimide derivative as acceptor were applied in non-fullerene solar cells.•The power conversion efficiencies of 1.6–2.6% were achieved with broad photo-response from 300 nm to 1000 nm.•The modest PCEs of these DPP polymers based non-fullerene solar cells were attributed to the high charge recombination.

Diketopyrrolopyrrole (DPP)-based conjugated polymers have been successfully applied in high performance field-effect transistors and fullerene-based solar cells, but show limited application in non-fullerene solar cells. In this work, we use four DPP polymers as electron donor and a perylene bisimide dye as electron acceptor to construct non-fullerene solar cells. The donors and acceptor have complementary absorption spectra in visible and near-infrared region, resulting in broad photo-response from 300 nm to 1000 nm. The solar cells were found to provide relatively low power conversion efficiencies of 1.6–2.6%, which was mainly due to low photocurrent and fill factor. Further investigation reveals that the low performance is originated from the high charge recombination in photo-active layers. Our systematical studies will help better understand the non-fullerene solar cells based on DPP polymers and inspire new researches toward efficient non-fullerene solar cells with broad photo-response.

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