Fused Benzothiadiazole: A Building Block for n-Type Organic Acceptor to Achieve High-Performance Organic Solar Cells

Jun Yuan; Yunqiang Zhang; Liuyang Zhou; Chujun Zhang; Tsz-Ki Lau; Guichuan Zhang; Xinhui Lu; Hin-Lap Yip; Shu Kong So; Serge Beaupré; Mathieu Mainville; Paul A Johnson; Mario Leclerc; Honggang Chen; Hongjian Peng; Yongfang Li; Yingping Zou

doi:10.1002/adma.201807577

Fused Benzothiadiazole: A Building Block for n-Type Organic Acceptor to Achieve High-Performance Organic Solar Cells

Adv Mater. 2019 Apr;31(17):e1807577. doi: 10.1002/adma.201807577. Epub 2019 Mar 18.

Authors

Jun Yuan¹, Yunqiang Zhang¹, Liuyang Zhou^{1

2}, Chujun Zhang³, Tsz-Ki Lau⁴, Guichuan Zhang⁵, Xinhui Lu⁴, Hin-Lap Yip⁵, Shu Kong So³, Serge Beaupré⁶, Mathieu Mainville⁶, Paul A Johnson⁶, Mario Leclerc⁶, Honggang Chen¹, Hongjian Peng¹, Yongfang Li², Yingping Zou¹

Affiliations

¹ College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Central South University, Changsha, 410083, P. R. China.
² Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, CAS Key Laboratory of Organic Solids, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, P. R. China.
³ Department of Physics and Institute of Advanced Materials, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong SAR, 999077, P. R. China.
⁴ Department of Physics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, New Territories, Hong Kong, 999077, P. R. China.
⁵ State Key Laboratory of Luminescent Materials and Devices, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510640, P. R. China.
⁶ Department of Chemistry, Université Laval, Quebec City, Quebec, G1V 0A6, Canada.

PMID: 30883937
DOI: 10.1002/adma.201807577

Abstract

Narrow bandgap n-type organic semiconductors (n-OS) have attracted great attention in recent years as acceptors in organic solar cells (OSCs), due to their easily tuned absorption and electronic energy levels in comparison with fullerene acceptors. Herein, a new n-OS acceptor, Y5, with an electron-deficient-core-based fused structure is designed and synthesized, which exhibits a strong absorption in the 600-900 nm region with an extinction coefficient of 1.24 × 10⁵ cm^-1 , and an electron mobility of 2.11 × 10^-4 cm² V^-1 s^-1 . By blending Y5 with three types of common medium-bandgap polymers (J61, PBDB-T, and TTFQx-T1) as donors, all devices exhibit high short-circuit current densities over 20 mA cm^-2 . As a result, the power conversion efficiency of the Y5-based OSCs with J61, TTFQx-T1, and PBDB-T reaches 11.0%, 13.1%, and 14.1%, respectively. This indicates that Y5 is a universal and highly efficient n-OS acceptor for applications in organic solar cells.

Keywords: electron-deficient core; fused benzothiadiazole; nonfullerene acceptors; organic photovoltaics; power conversion efficiency.

Abstract

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