A crucial issue facing polymer-based solar cells is how to manage the energetics of the polymer/fullerene blends to maximize short-circuit current density and open-circuit voltage at the same time and thus the power conversion efficiency. Here we demonstrate that the use of a naphthobisoxadiazole-based polymer with a narrow bandgap of 1.52 eV leads to high open-circuit voltages of approximately 1 V and high-power conversion efficiencies of ~9% in solar cells, resulting in photon energy loss as small as ~0.5 eV, which is much smaller than that of typical polymer systems (0.7–1.0 eV). This is ascribed to the high external quantum efficiency for the systems with a very small energy offset for charge separation. These unconventional features of the present polymer system will inspire the field of polymer-based solar cells towards further improvement of power conversion efficiencies with both high short-circuit current density and open-circuit voltage.

Nature Communications 6, Article number: 10085 doi:10.1038/ncomms10085
Received 26 March 2015 Accepted 02 November 2015 Published 02 December 2015

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/151202/ncomms10085/full/ncomms10085.html