Unraveling the Mystery of Ternary Organic Solar Cells: A Review on the Influence of Third Component on Structure–Morphology–Performance Relationships
Christopher Tan, Basil T. Wong
Abstract
The addition of a third component to a binary bulk heterojunction configuration in organic solar cells is called ternary organic solar cells (TOSCs), which is trending as a solar cell configuration that strikes balance between tandem and binary bulk heterojunction organic solar cells by increasing spectral absorption without laborious processing methods. Apart from increasing the spectral range, the third component is also able to tune the morphology and electronic properties for enhanced performance. Existing reviews on TOSCs thus far mainly focus on reporting related research progresses and their respective performances. Instead, a thorough review on understanding the influence of the third component in terms of morphology and electronic properties via a computational chemistry perspective (structure–morphology–performance) is presented here. This bottom‐up approach reviews the influence of the third component originating from intermolecular interactions to crystallization and phase properties, and finally to electronic properties such as charge transfer and energy transfer. Herein, new theoretical insights opening up potential research opportunities to propel organic solar cells to one day surpass 20% power conversion efficiency are revealed.