Macrocyclic Encapsulation in a Non-fused Tetrathiophene Acceptor for Efficient Organic Solar Cells with High Short-Circuit Current Density

Shuaishuai Shen; Yu Mi; Yanni Ouyang; Yi Lin; Jingjing Deng; Wenjun Zhang; Jianqi Zhang; Zaifei Ma; Chunfeng Zhang; Jinsheng Song; Zhishan Bo

doi:10.1002/anie.202316495

Macrocyclic Encapsulation in a Non-fused Tetrathiophene Acceptor for Efficient Organic Solar Cells with High Short-Circuit Current Density

Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2023 Dec 21;62(52):e202316495. doi: 10.1002/anie.202316495. Epub 2023 Nov 23.

Authors

Shuaishuai Shen¹, Yu Mi¹, Yanni Ouyang², Yi Lin³, Jingjing Deng¹, Wenjun Zhang¹, Jianqi Zhang⁴, Zaifei Ma³, Chunfeng Zhang², Jinsheng Song¹, Zhishan Bo⁵

Affiliations

¹ Engineering Research Center for Nanomaterials, Henan University, Kaifeng, 475004, China.
² National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Physics, and Collaborative Innovation Center for Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093, China.
³ State Key Laboratory for Modification of Chemical Fibers and Polymer Material, Center for Advanced Low-Dimension Materials, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Donghua University, Shanghai, 201620, China.
⁴ National Center for Nanoscience and Technology, Beijing, 100190, China.
⁵ Beijing Key Laboratory of Energy Conversion and Storage Materials, College of Chemistry, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China.

PMID: 37948070
DOI: 10.1002/anie.202316495

Abstract

Non-fullerene acceptors have shown great promise for organic solar cells (OSCs). However, challenges in achieving high efficiency molecular system with conformational unicity and effective molecular stacking remain. In this study, we present a new design of non-fused tetrathiophene acceptor R4T-1 via employing the encapsulation of tetrathiophene with macrocyclic ring. The single crystal structure analysis reveals that cyclic alkyl side chains can perfectly encapsulate the central part of molecule and generate a conformational stable and planar molecular backbone. Whereas, the control 4T-5 without the encapsulation restriction displays cis- and twisted conformation. As a result, R4T-1 based OSCs achieved an outstanding power conversion efficiency (PCE) exceeding 15.10 % with a high short-circuit current density (J_sc ) of 25.48 mA/cm² , which is significantly improved by ≈30 % in relative to that of the control. Our findings demonstrate that the macrocyclic encapsulation strategy could assist fully non-fused electron acceptors (FNEAs) to achieve a high photovoltaic performance and pave a new way for FNEAs design.

Keywords: Macrocyclic Encapsulation; Non-Fused Acceptors; Short-Circuit Current Density; Solar Cells; Tetrathiophene.

Abstract

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