(Invited) Metalation Effect on Diketopyrrolopyrrole-Tetrabenzoporphyrin Conjugate As p-Type Material in BHJ Organic Photovoltaics

Abstract

Organic photovoltaics have attracted much attention for the next generation of photovoltaics. Tetrabenzoporphyrin (BP) is a p-type organic semiconductor characterized as the large, rigid p-framework, excellent stability, and good photoabsorption capability. Because of the low solubility, thermal precursor approach is necessary for the deposition of BP by solution process, where a soluble precursor (CP) of BP is spin-coated on the substrate, followed by annealing of CP film to make BP film by in-situ retro-Diels-Alder reaction of CP.[1,2] In 2017, we reported side-chain engineering for efficient photocurrent generation using a series of diketopyrrolopyrrole (DPP)–tetrabenzoporphyrin (BP) conjugates named Cn-DPP–BP (n = 4, 6, 8 or 10 depending on the length of n-alkyl groups on the DPP unit) as p-type materials in BHJ OPVs in combination with PC61BM as a n-type material by the thermal precursor approach.[3] The comparative study shows that the short-circuit current density largely depends on the length of alkyl substituents, ranging from 0.88 mA cm-2 with C10-DPP–BP to 15.2 mA cm-2 with C4-DPP–BP. C10-DPP–BP in the film is edge-on orientation dominant while that of C4-DPP–BP is face-on orientation dominant.Encouraged with the results, we synthesized a zinc complex of C4-DPP-CP (C4-DPP-ZnCP) as a soluble precursor of C4-DPP-ZnBP to investigate the effect of metalation of the porphyrin cavity for the BHJ OPV performance. BHJ OPV was prepared by thermal precursor approach: spin-coating of a mixed solution of the precursor, C4-DPP-ZnCP, and PC61BM, followed by annealing at 200 ºC to make a blend film of C4-DPP-ZnBP and PC61BM. Interestingly, the energy gap and ionization potential of C4-DPP-ZnBP film and C4-DPP-BP film are similar to each other, but the Jsc of C4-DPP-ZnBP is 1.5 times larger than that of C4-DPP-BP. We will discuss the relationship between film morphology and OPV performance by studying the blend film of C4-DPP-ZnBP/PC61BM by atomic force microscopy (AFM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis and p-polarized multiple-angle incidence resolution spectrometry (p-MAIRS).References H. Yamada, T. Okujima, N. Ono, Chem. Commun. 2008, 2957-2974. H. Yamada, D. Kuzuhara, M. Suzuki, H. Hayashi, N. Aratani, Bull. Chem. Soc. Jpn. 2020, 93, 1234-1267. K. Takahashi, D. Kumagai, N. Yamada, D. Kuzuhara, Y. Yamaguchi, N. Aratani, T. Koganezawa, S. Koshika, N. Yoshimoto, S. Masuo, M. Suzuki, K. Nakayama, H. Yamada, J. Mater. Chem. A 2017, 5, 14003-14011.