Organic optoelectronic devices exhibit distinctive photoresponse to the near-infrared (NIR) light and show great potential in many fields. However, the optoelectronic properties of the existing devices hardly meet the technical requirements of new applications such as energy conversion and health sensing, thus raising the demand to develop high-performance NIR organic semiconductors. To address this issue, a new NIR material, namely, BFIC, is designed and synthesized by inserting fluorothieno[3,4-b]thiophene (FTT) as a π-bridge. Since the introduction of FTT can extend the conjugation, stabilize the quinoid resonant structure, and enhance the intramolecular charge transfer, BFIC displays a broad and intense absorption in the NIR region, ranging from 700 to 1050 nm. As a result, the organic solar cell based on BFIC and a polymer donor PTB7-Th realizes a power conversion efficiency of 10.38%. The semitransparent organic solar cell (OSC) shows a power conversion efficiency of 6.15%, accompanied by an average visible transmittance of 38.79% due to the selective photoresponse in the NIR range. The organic photodetector based on PTB7-Th:BFIC delivers a broad spectral response ranging from 330 to 1030 nm with a specific detectivity over 1013 Jones under the self-powered mode, which is one of the highest detectivities among the broad-band organic photodetectors.
Keywords: fluorothieno[3,4-b]thiophene; near-infrared materials; organic photodetectors; organic solar cells.