Compared with the flourishing PD/SA and SD/SA systems, there is still a great gap in the photovoltaic performance for SD/PA-type OSCs, whose highest PCE has not exceeded 10% to date [
31-
33,
39]. There are two main reasons accounting for such poor performances of SD/PA systems. On one hand, due to the lack of novel and high-performance polymer acceptors, the in-depth study on the structure-performance relationship of SD/PA-type OSCs is still scarce. On the other hand, the undesirable morphology with large-scale phase separation in the active layer of SD/PA systems, severely limits the extion diffusion/dissociation, resulting in low device performance [
40-
43]. Especially, PD/SA system with the most outstanding performance, which is also based on the combination of small molecule and polymer, is far ahead of SD/PA-type OSCs. The corresponding reasons are worth exploring. Firstly, a wide variety of high performance small molecule acceptors have been developed [
24,
27-
29], benefiting from their easily adjustable energy level, spectrum and crystallinity, especially the emergence of Y6 [
24], which has rapidly promoted the development of PD/SA systems. By contrast, the researches about SD/PA-type OSCs are sluggish, mainly because of the slow development of novel and high-performance polymer acceptor materials. Secondly, small molecular acceptors, with relatively low phase transition temperature and low crystallinity, tend to self-aggregate or crystallize at high temperature, thereby leading to more moderate morphology for the PD/SA blend. However, active layers of SD/PA blend always suffer from the undesirable morphology with large-scale phase separation, which is heavily induced by the high crystallinity of small molecular donors [
41,
42,
44]. Even so, it is still worth paying sufficient attention on the SD/PA systems, since they tend to have superior thermal stability according to some reported results, which is essential for the practical application of OSCs [
39,
44-
46]. The excellent thermal stability of SD/PA system may be attribute to phase stability of the polymer acceptor and the high crystallinity of the small molecule donor. For example, the performance of PD/SA system constructed by PTB7-Th and EH-IDTBR, under the condition of heat treatment at 150 ℃ for 3 days, is significantly reduced, and only 62% of the original performance can be maintained [
39]. However, the device of BD3T: PBN-15 has retained 84% of the initial PCE value after 3 days of heat treatment at 150 ℃, mainly due to the high crystallinity and high crystallization temperature of small molecule BD3T, as well as the phase stability of the polymer PBN-15 [
39]. In addition, for the all small molecule system based on BDT2TR and PC
71BM, only 33% of its initial PCE was maintained when annealing at 150 ℃ for 15 h. In contrast, after annealing at 150 ℃ for 15 h, the BDT2TR: PNDI-2T-based device has retained 93% of its original PCE, benefiting from excellent thermal stability of polymer PNDI-2T [
46]. These results have successfully proved that the high crystallinity of small molecule and thermal stability of polymer play an important role in the excellent thermal stability of SD/PA systems. In addition to thermal stability, there is another advantage with the SD/PA systems: mechanical stability, which also increases its potential for the practical application of the device [
46]. And given the existing problems, designing novel polymer acceptors with high electron mobilities and appropriate small molecule donors with adjustable crystallinity, which can afford an ideal morphology that small molecule interspersed and stacked among the polymer chains in the blend film, should be the key points to avoid large-scale phase separation as well as achieve performance breakthrough for SD/PA-type OSCs.