Over 18.1% Efficiency of Layer-by-Layer Polymer Solar Cells by Enhancing Exciton Utilization near the ITO Electrode

In this work, layer-by-layer (LbL) polymer solar cells (PSCs) are constructed without/with the incorporation of a dissociation strengthening layer (DSL) on the basis of the wide-bandgap donor D18-Cl, as well as the narrow-bandgap nonfullerene acceptor Y6. The efficiency of LbL PSCs is enhanced from 17.62 to 18.15% through introducing a DSL, originating from the enhanced dissociation of D18-Cl excitons near the ITO electrode. Meanwhile, the interfacial energy between D18-Cl and Y6 layers is decreased by incorporating a DSL, which should facilitate molecular interdiffusion for more adequate exciton dissociation in LbL active layers. This work offers a simple and resultful way for realizing power conversion efficiency (PCE) improvement of LbL PSCs with maximized exciton utilization in LbL active layers. The universality of the DSL incorporation strategy on performance improvement can be further confirmed with a boosted PCE from 17.39 to 18.03% or from 17.13 to 17.61% for D18-Cl/L8-BO- or D18-Cl/N3-based LbL PSCs by incorporating a DSL.