A New Electron-Rich Unit for Polymer Electron Acceptors: 4,4-Difluoro-4H-cyclopenta[2,1-b:3,4-b']dithiophene

Ruyan Zhao; Yang Min; Chuandong Dou; Jun Liu; Lixiang Wang

doi:10.1002/chem.201702303

A New Electron-Rich Unit for Polymer Electron Acceptors: 4,4-Difluoro-4H-cyclopenta[2,1-b:3,4-b']dithiophene

Chemistry. 2017 Jul 18;23(40):9486-9490. doi: 10.1002/chem.201702303. Epub 2017 Jun 27.

Authors

Ruyan Zhao^{1

2}, Yang Min^{1

2}, Chuandong Dou¹, Jun Liu¹, Lixiang Wang¹

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, 130022, P. R. China.
² University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, P. R. China.

PMID: 28568318
DOI: 10.1002/chem.201702303

Abstract

We report 4,4-difluoro-4H-cyclopenta[2,1-b:3,4-b']dithiophene (fCDT) as a new electron-rich unit to design polymer electron acceptors. Owing to the fluoro substitutes, fCDT unit exhibits downshifted LUMO energy level, diminished steric hindrance effect and strong intermolecular interaction. The resulting polymer electron acceptor exhibits low-lying LUMO energy level and high electron mobility, as well as good all-polymer solar cell device performance.

Keywords: donor-acceptor systems; electron acceptor; electron-rich unit; polymers; solar cells.