Probing Nanomorphology of Guest Component in Ternary OPVs

<b>Recent advancements in organic photovoltaic (OPV) solar technology show that with the inclusion of a third guest component to the traditional binary devices, efficiencies can surpass 20% which are comparable or even above competing technologies. The addition of ternary components contribute to increasingly complex nanomorphologies that most characterization techniques cannot determine. Our objective is to identify these key nanostructures that maximize the ternary advantage. First, we characterize the thermodynamic mixing of donor and acceptor molecules in phase-separated equilibrium states via surface energy measurements combined with the blend demixing experiments we have previously demonstrated using spectral X-ray microscopy. We then determine the dominant paradigm ternary morphology that enhances performance using traditional GIWAXS in conjunction with chemical sensitive nanoprobes such as spectrally resolved RSoXS analysis and STXM directly on high performance active layers. Uncovering the morphological pathways that these ternary components provoke will allow us to inflect the fabrication process of these devices to maximize the ternary advantage for commercially viable, high-performance OPVs. </b>