Organic photovoltaics: Understanding the preaggregation of polymer donors in solution and its morphological impact

In bulk-heterojunction organic solar cells, it is well established that the active-layer morphology significantly impacts device performance. However, morphology control remains very challenging. An interesting step in that direction was recently provided by the development of polymer donors that display a temperature-dependent aggregation behavior in solution; the aggregation characteristics were found indeed to play a determining role in the eventual active-layer morphology. Here, a combination of thermodynamic analyses, molecular dynamics simulations, and long-range corrected density functional theory calculations enables us (i) to establish the Flory-Huggins interaction parameter, χ, as a useful figure of merit that allows us to integrate the contributions from all inter-related molecular interactions and to describe the extent of polymer preaggregation in solution at room temperature; (ii) to correlate the χ values for various polymer solutions to the extent of polymer aggregation and the morphological characteristics of the active layers; and (iii) to assess how polymer-polymer and polymer-solvent intermolecular interactions contribute to the variations in χ values among different polymer solutions. We have chosen to examine four representative polymer donors (PBT4T-2OD, PBTff4T-2OD, PffBT4T-2OD, and PffBTff4T-2DT) in solution in chlorobenzene or dichlorobenzene. With χ as a robust bridge, our results provide an unprecedented, detailed description of the relationships among intermolecular interactions, extent of polymer solution aggregation, and morphological features of the active layers.