Efficient Ternary Polymer Solar Cells with Tunable Crystallinity and Phase Separation of Active Layers via Incorporating GHK-Cu.
Huang. Jinzhen J; Yu. Huangzhong H
Key Findings
- GHK‑Cu improves the crystal structure of the solar‑cell material ITIC, leading to better charge flow.
- Adding just 0.1 wt % GHK‑Cu raises the power conversion efficiency of PBDB‑T:ITIC cells from 10.28 % to 12.07 %.
- The same additive also boosts PM6:Y6 solar cells from 15.21 % to 17.11 % efficiency.
Practical Outcomes
- For biohackers or health‑focused enthusiasts, this research does not provide any actionable information about using GHK‑Cu in the body. It is a materials‑science paper showing that GHK‑Cu can be a useful additive for improving solar‑cell performance, but it has no direct relevance to health, longevity, or performance protocols.
Summary
The study shows that adding a tiny amount of the peptide GHK‑Cu to the mix of materials used in a type of solar cell makes the cell work better, boosting its efficiency from about 10% to 12% in one case and from 15% to 17% in another. However, the research is about solar‑cell performance, not about any health effects of the peptide.
Abstract
The crystallinity of a nonfullerene small-molecule acceptor plays an important function in the bimolecular recombination and carrier transfer of polymer solar cells (PSCs). However, because of the competition between the donor (PBDB-T) and acceptor (ITIC) in processes of phase separation and crystallization, the PBDB-T preferentially forms a crystalline network, which limits the molecular diffusion of ITIC and leads to the weak crystallinity of ITIC, eventually restricting the photoelectric conversion efficiency (PCE) of PSCs. Therefore, in our work, a small-molecule biomaterial, Gly-His-Lys-Cu (SMBM GHK-Cu), is incorporated into binary PBDB-T:ITIC to construct a PBDB-T:ITIC:GHK-Cu ternary system. The addition of GHK-Cu increases ITIC crystallinity and promotes the formation in continuous single-phase domains of PBDB-T and ITIC, which creates an optimized bicontinuous network path to increase and balance charge transmission in PSCs. Meanwhile, GHK-Cu makes energy transfer from GHK-Cu to PBDB-T appreciably efficient, improving the photon capture and exciton-generation rate of PBDB-T. Moreover, it can form a complementary absorption spectrum with PBDB-T and ITIC, which enhances the PCE of ternary devices. Excitingly, the PCE of PSC-based PBDB-T:ITIC is enhanced from 10.28% to 12.07% via incorporating 0.1 wt % GHK-Cu into PBDB-T:ITIC, in which the enhanced open voltage (<i>V</i><sub>OC</sub>) is 0.92 V, the short-circuit current (<i>J</i><sub>SC</sub>) is 17.87 mA/cm<sup>2</sup>, and the fill factor (FF) is 73.4%. Meanwhile, the PCE of PSC-based PM6:Y6 is also enhanced from 15.21% for a binary PSC to 17.11% for ternary PSC-based PM6:Y6:0.1 wt % GHK-Cu. This work shows that the cheap and environmentally friendly GHK-Cu has great potential for application in tuning the crystallinity and phase separation of the active layer.
Study Information
pubmed
2021
2021-09-21T00:00:00.000Z
10.1021/acsami.1c12326
4
35