Branched: Versus linear: Side-chain effect on fluorinated wide bandgap donors and their applications in organic solar cells

Tainan Duan, Ru-Ze Liang, Yingying Fu, Yuying Chang, Zhipeng Kan, Cheng Zhong, Zhiyuan Xie, Donghong Yu

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

We report a new series of wide band-gap small organic molecules as donor-materials featuring an indaceno[1,2-b:5,6-b′]dithiophene (IDT) core and fluorinated thiophene linkers for solution-processed organic solar cells. Two isomeric aliphatic groups were introduced as side chains on the IDT units (coded I4FR-O and I4FR-EH). These donors have been systematically characterized and employed in bulk-heterojunction organic photovoltaic (OPV) devices cooperating with a PC70BM electron acceptor. Replacing the linear alkyl group (n-octyl) in the IDT core with a branched constitutional isomer (2-ethylhexyl) results in a remarkable improvement in the performance of OPV devices: the optimized power conversion efficiencies of 2.10% and 4.30% were achieved for I4FR-O and I4FR-EH, respectively. Such wide efficiency gap can be partly attributed to a preferable morphology in the donor-fullerene blends of I4FR-EHvia such side-chain engineering.
Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)753-760
Number of pages8
JournalNew Journal of Chemistry
Volume44
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 6 2019

Bibliographical note

KAUST Repository Item: Exported on 2020-10-01
Acknowledgements: We acknowledge financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21702202), Youth Innovation Promotion Association CAS (No. 2019373) and the Natural Science Foundation of Chongqing (cstc2019jcyj-msxm2027). Financial support from Innovation fund Denmark (INKA-Inks for large-scale processing of polymer solar cells) and Sino-Danish Centre for Education and Research (SDC) are also fully acknowledged.

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