Benzothiadiazole based cascade material to boost the performance of inverted ternary organic solar cellsBenzothiadiazole based cascade material to boost the performance of inverted ternary organic solar cells Επιστολή Letter 2021-09-272020enA conjugated, ladder-type multi-fused ring 4,7-dithienbenzothiadiazole:thiophene derivative, named as compound ‘T’, was for the first time incorporated, within the PTB7:PC71BM photoactive layer for inverted ternary organic solar cells (TOSCs) realization. The effective energy level offset caused by compound T between the polymeric donor and fullerene acceptor materials, as well as its resulting potential as electron cascade material contribute to an enhanced exciton dissociation, electron transfer facilitator and thus improved overall photovoltaic performance. The engineering optimization of the inverted TOSC, ITO/PFN/PTB7:Compound T(5% v/v):PC71BM/MoO3/Al, resulted in an overall power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 8.34%, with a short-circuit current density (Jsc) of 16.75 mA cm−2, open-circuit voltage (Voc) of 0.74 V and a fill factor (FF) of 68.1%, under AM1.5G illumination. This photovoltaic performance was improved by approximately 12% with respect to the control binary device. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Energies132Krassas_et_al_Energies_13(2)_2020.pdfChania [Greece]Library of TUC2021-09-24application/pdf3.7 MBfree Krassas Miron Polyzoidis Christos Tzourmpakis Pavlos Kosmidis Dimitris Viskadouros Georgios Βισκαδουρος Γεωργιος Kornilios Nikolaos Charalambidis Georgios Nikolaou Vasilis Coutsolelos, Athanassios Petridis Konstantinos Stylianakis Minas Kymakis, Emmanuel MDPI Organic solar cells Ternary blend Bulk heterojunction Cascade effect Charge transfer Additive Benzothiadiazole Small molecule