Dithieno[3,2-b:2',3'-d]pyrrol Fused Nonfullerene Acceptors Enabling Over 13% Efficiency for Organic Solar Cells

Jia Sun; Xiaoling Ma; Zhuohan Zhang; Jiangsheng Yu; Jie Zhou; Xinxing Yin; Linqiang Yang; Renyong Geng; Rihong Zhu; Fujun Zhang; Weihua Tang

doi:10.1002/adma.201707150

Dithieno[3,2-b:2',3'-d]pyrrol Fused Nonfullerene Acceptors Enabling Over 13% Efficiency for Organic Solar Cells

Adv Mater. 2018 Apr;30(16):e1707150. doi: 10.1002/adma.201707150. Epub 2018 Mar 12.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ School of Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210094, P. R. China.
² Key Laboratory of Luminescence and Optical Information, Ministry of Education, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, 100044, P. R. China.
³ MIIT Key Laboratory of Advanced Solid Laser, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210094, P. R. China.

PMID: 29527772
DOI: 10.1002/adma.201707150

Abstract

A new electron-rich central building block, 5,5,12,12-tetrakis(4-hexylphenyl)-indacenobis-(dithieno[3,2-b:2',3'-d]pyrrol) (INP), and two derivative nonfullerene acceptors (INPIC and INPIC-4F) are designed and synthesized. The two molecules reveal broad (600-900 nm) and strong absorption due to the satisfactory electron-donating ability of INP. Compared with its counterpart INPIC, fluorinated nonfullerene acceptor INPIC-4F exhibits a stronger near-infrared absorption with a narrower optical bandgap of 1.39 eV, an improved crystallinity with higher electron mobility, and down-shifted highest occupied molecular orbital and lowest unoccupied molecular orbital energy levels. Organic solar cells (OSCs) based on INPIC-4F exhibit a high power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 13.13% and a relatively low energy loss of 0.54 eV, which is among the highest efficiencies reported for binary OSCs in the literature. The results demonstrate the great potential of the new INP as an electron-donating building block for constructing high-performance nonfullerene acceptors for OSCs.

Keywords: dithieno[3,2-b:2′,3′-d]pyrrol; high-performance organic solar cells; narrow bandgap; nonfullerene acceptors.