Abstract
Indacenodithiophene (IDT) is a promising building block for designing organic semiconductors. In this work, a new pentacyclic ladder-type arene IDMe was designed and synthesized by introducing methyl substitution on the short-axis of IDT. Two non-fullerene electron acceptors (IDIC and ID-MeIC) without and with methyl substitution were designed and synthesized for further study. Compared with IDIC, ID-MeIC with methyl substitution on the short-axis of IDT shows smaller bandgap, stronger extinction coefficient, and better crystallinity. Besides, PBDB-T: ID-MeIC blend film shows more efficient exciton generation and dissociation and more balanced charge transport mobility. Therefore, polymer solar cells based on PBDB-T: ID-MeIC can achieve better photovoltaic performance with a PCE of 6.46% and substantial increase in JSC to 14.13 mA cm−2 compared to 4.94% and 9.10 mA cm−2 of PBDB-T: IDIC. These results suggest that short-axis substitution on multi-fused ladder-type arenes, such as IDT is an effective way to change the optical and electronic properties of the organic semiconductors for high-performance OPVs.
Highlights
Organic solar cell (OSC) is one of the most promising new energy technologies due to their advantages such as low cost, lightweight, enable roll-to-roll fabrication (Hiramoto et al, 1995; Halls et al, 1996)
Under short-circuit conditions, the values of Pdiss were determined to be 54% and 82% for the PBDB-T: IDIC and PBDB-T: ID-MeIC–based devices, respectively. These results indicate that PBDB-T: ID-MeIC–based device has more efficient exciton generation and dissociation, which is contributed to its high JSC
ID-MeIC was functionalized as nonfullerene electron acceptors for comparison with previously reported IDIC without the methyl substitution
Summary
Organic solar cell (OSC) is one of the most promising new energy technologies due to their advantages such as low cost, lightweight, enable roll-to-roll fabrication (Hiramoto et al, 1995; Halls et al, 1996). This work shows that the short-axis substitution is an effective way to optimize the optical and electronic properties of the organic semiconductors for organic photovoltaics (OPVs) (Lin et al, 2018). Compared with IDIC, ID-MeIC with methyl substitution on short-axis of IDT shows a smaller bandgap, stronger extinction coefficient and better crystallinity.
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