Issue 1, 2024

Highly crystalline polycyclic aromatic lactam-based regioregular wide-band gap polymer donors for organic solar cells

Abstract

The design of wide-band gap polymer donors with complementary absorption to non-fullerene acceptors (NFAs) is essential to increase the photovoltaic efficiency of organic solar cells (OSCs). However, some effective wide-band gap polymer donors comprising asymmetric units suffer from a lack of regioregularity, which negatively impacts the intermolecular packing among polymer backbones and decreases their degree of crystallinity and charge carrier mobility. In this study, asymmetrical electron-accepting building blocks of thienoquinolinone (TQO) or thienoisoquinolinone (TIQO) are modified to achieve dimeric structures for improving their symmetry. The different monomers are synthesized by connecting TQO and TIQO in a symmetrical dimeric structure and four kinds of wide-band gap polymer donors, namely PBDT-PQ, PBDT-TQ, PBDT-PiQ, and PBDT-TiQ, are synthesized by Stille cross-coupling polymerization with a benzodithiophene derivative. Grazing incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering (GIWAXS) results demonstrate that the synthesized polymer donors have a high degree of crystallinity. Among them, PBDT-PiQ exhibits both compact intermolecular π–π packing and a high degree of crystalline properties, which promotes effective charge transfer in the active layers. Consequently, PBDT-PiQ:Y6-based OSCs exhibit the maximum power conversion efficiency of 11.28%. The synthetic strategy proposed in this study strengthens the intermolecular interactions between polymer backbones and improves the degree of crystallinity, thereby enhancing the photovoltaic performance of OSCs.

Graphical abstract: Highly crystalline polycyclic aromatic lactam-based regioregular wide-band gap polymer donors for organic solar cells

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
22 Aug 2023
Accepted
27 Nov 2023
First published
27 Nov 2023

J. Mater. Chem. C, 2024,12, 80-87

Highly crystalline polycyclic aromatic lactam-based regioregular wide-band gap polymer donors for organic solar cells

J. Ha, B. Park, S. Ko and D. Hwang, J. Mater. Chem. C, 2024, 12, 80 DOI: 10.1039/D3TC02994H

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