Thieno[3,4-c]Pyrrole-4,6-Dione-Based Polymer Acceptors for High Open-Circuit Voltage All-Polymer Solar Cells

Shengjian Liu, Xin Song, Simil Thomas, Zhipeng Kan, Federico Cruciani, Frédéric Laquai, Jean-Luc Bredas, Pierre Beaujuge

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

72 Scopus citations

Abstract

While polymer acceptors are promising fullerene alternatives in the fabrication of efficient bulk heterojunction (BHJ) solar cells, the range of efficient material systems relevant to the “all-polymer” BHJ concept remains narrow, and currently limits the perspectives to meet the 10% efficiency threshold in all-polymer solar cells. This report examines two polymer acceptor analogs composed of thieno[3,4-c]pyrrole-4,6-dione (TPD) and 3,4-difluorothiophene ([2F]T) motifs, and their BHJ solar cell performance pattern with a low-bandgap polymer donor commonly used with fullerenes (PBDT-TS1; taken as a model system). In this material set, the introduction of a third electron-deficient motif, namely 2,1,3-benzothiadiazole (BT), is shown to (i) significantly narrow the optical gap (Eopt) of the corresponding polymer (by ≈0.2 eV) and (ii) improve the electron mobility of the polymer by over two orders of magnitude in BHJ solar cells. In turn, the narrow-gap P2TPDBT[2F]T analog (Eopt = 1.7 eV) used as fullerene alternative yields high open-circuit voltages (VOC) of ≈1.0 V, notable short-circuit current values (JSC) of ≈11.0 mA cm−2, and power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) nearing 5% in all-polymer BHJ solar cells. P2TPDBT[2F]T paves the way to a new, promising class of polymer acceptor candidates.
Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)1602574
JournalAdvanced Energy Materials
Volume7
Issue number15
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 20 2017

Bibliographical note

KAUST Repository Item: Exported on 2020-10-01
Acknowledgements: S.L. and X.S. contributed equally to this work. The authors acknowledge financial support under Baseline Research Funding from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) and from ONR-Global (Award No. N62909-15-1-2003 to J.L.B.). The authors thank KAUST ACL for mass spectrometry, GPC, and elemental analyses, and are grateful to the KAUST Supercomputing Laboratory (KSL) and IT Research Computing Teams for providing continuous assistance as well as computational and storage resources. The authors thank R.-Z. Liang and M. Babics for their contributions in device characterizations.

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