Effects Of Diphenyl Ethers Research Articles

Perylene Diimide Based Organic Photovoltaics with Slot-Die Coated Active Layers from Halogen-Free Solvents in Air at Room Temperature.

Herein, we investigate the role of processing solvent additives on the formation of polymer-perylene diimide bulk-heterojunction active layers for organic photovoltaics using both spin-coating and slot-die coating methods. We compare the effect of 1,8-diiodooctane (DIO) and diphenyl ether (DPE) as solvent additives on the aggregation behavior of the non-fullerene acceptor, N-annulated perylene diimide dimer (tPDI2N-EH), in neat films and blended films with the benzodithiophene-quinoxaline (BDT-QX, QX-3) donor polymer, processed from toluene in air. DIO processing crystallizes the tPDI2N-EH acceptor and leads to the decreased solar cell performance. DPE processing has a more subtle effect on the bulk-heterojunction morphology and leads to an improved solar cell performance. A comparison of the spin-coating vs slot-die coating methods shows that the effect of DPE is prominent for the slot-die coated active layers. While similar device power conversion efficiencies are achieved with active layers coated with both methods (ca. 7.3% vs 6.5%), the use of DPE improves the film quality when the slot-die coating method is employed.

Effect of Diphenyl Ether in Ti-based Ternary Catalyst on Polymerization, Microstructure and Property of cis-1,4-Polyisoprene

A tricomponent catalyst comprising titanium tetrachloride, triisobutyl aluminum and diphenyl ether is developed for the highly cis-1,4-selective polymerization of isoprene. The influence of the content of diphenyl ether and its complexation order on polymerization, microstructure and performance of polyisoprene are studied. The polyisoprene synthesized presents high monomer conversion (91–99%). With the increasing of diphenyl ether content, intrinsic viscosity and viscosity-average molecular weight of polyisoprene increase. The molar percentage of cis-1,4-unit is almost unaffected by diphenyl ether and different complexation sequence. The polyisoprene reveals comparable Tg (–61.31°C) and mechanical strengths (11.14 MPa, 667%) to commercially available LHIR-80 synthesized with neodymium. However, the viscosity and viscosity-average molecular weight of the former are lower than that of the latter, which avails the processability and maintains excellent mechanical properties.