Developing Halogen-Free Polymer Donors for Efficient Nonfullerene Organic Solar Cells by Addition of Highly Electron-Deficient Diketopyrrolopyrrole Unit

High-performance polymer donors when paired with nonfullerene acceptors are mainly limited to flanking halogenated benzodithiophene (BDT)-based π-conjugated copolymers, which however involve complex synthetic procedures. Herein, a series of halogen-free polymer donors that link BDT moiety with two highly electron-deficient benzodithiophene-dione (BDD) and diketopyrrolopyrrole (DPP) units with various molar ratios is developed. Compared with the benchmark PBDB-T donor containing BDD unit, additional incorporation of a stronger electron-negative DPP unit markedly lowers frontier molecular orbital levels and extends optical absorption, potentially leading to simultaneously enhanced V_OC and J_SC in organic solar cells. A remarkable power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 10.28% is thus obtained in the optimal P75 (BDD : DPP = 3:1 mol%) and Y6 blend cells in comparison with the reference PBDB-T:Y6 (9.20%). A slight addition of PC₇₁BM into the blend is found to further generate finer phase-separated domains and thus increase the best efficiency up to 12.20%. The subtly critical roles of PC₇₁BM are determined by transient absorption measurements on both thin-film and in situ devices to be the prolonged free charge carrier lifetime and the shallow charge transfer states, which enhance J_SC and fill factor in the device, respectively.