Abstract
Phthalocyanines and their main group and metal complexes are important classes of organic semiconductor materials but are usually highly insoluble and so frequently need to be processed by vacuum deposition in devices. We report two highly soluble silicon phthalocyanine (SiPc) diester compounds and demonstrate their potential as organic semiconductor materials. Near-infrared (λEL = 698–709 nm) solution-processed organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) were fabricated and exhibited external quantum efficiencies (EQEs) of up to 1.4%. Binary bulk heterojunction solar cells employing P3HT or PTB7 as the donor and the SiPc as the acceptor provided power conversion efficiencies (PCE) of up to 2.7% under simulated solar illumination. Our results show that soluble SiPcs are promising materials for organic electronics.
Highlights
Phthalocyanines (Pcs) are thermally and chemically stable planar 18 π-electron aromatic macrocycle analogs of porphyrins consisting of four nitrogen-linked isoindole units
Phthalocyanines have been incorporated into a wide range of functional devices ranging from organic field effect transistors,[3,4] sensors,[3] optical storage devices, organic lightemitting diodes (OLEDs),[5] and organic (OSC) and dyesensitized solar cells (DSSC).[6−8] Silicon phthalocyanines (SiPcs) are a attractive subclass of Pcs given the elemental abundance and very low toxicity levels of silicon coupled with their low band gap (∼1.7 eV)
To date, only a single report exists on the use of SiPcs as emitters in OLEDs, and there are but a handful of reports of SiPcs used as dyes in solar cells.[6,9−12] The very low solubility in common organic solvents of SiPcs is very likely a contributing factor to the paucity of reports of OLED and solar cell devices
Summary
Phthalocyanines (Pcs) are thermally and chemically stable planar 18 π-electron aromatic macrocycle analogs of porphyrins consisting of four nitrogen-linked isoindole units.
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