Purification and electronic characterisation of 18 isomers of the OPV acceptor material bis-[60]PCBM

W Shi; X Hou; T Liu; X Zhao; A B Sieval; J C Hummelen; T J S Dennis

doi:10.1039/c6cc07820f

Purification and electronic characterisation of 18 isomers of the OPV acceptor material bis-[60]PCBM

Chem Commun (Camb). 2017 Jan 10;53(5):975-978. doi: 10.1039/c6cc07820f.

Authors

W Shi¹, X Hou¹, T Liu¹, X Zhao¹, A B Sieval², J C Hummelen³, T J S Dennis¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Physics and Astronomy, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS, UK. j.dennis@qmul.ac.uk.
² Solenne BV, Zernikepark 6, 9747AN, Groningen, The Netherlands.
³ Stratingh Institute for Chemistry and Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials University of Groningen, Nijenborgh 4, 9747AG, Groningen, The Netherlands.

PMID: 28044152
DOI: 10.1039/c6cc07820f

Abstract

The as-produced isomer mixture of the organic photovoltaic device acceptor material bis-[60]PCBM has been purified into its constituents by peak-recycling HPLC, and those individual isomers were characterised by UV-Vis absorption spectroscopy and cyclic voltammetry. A total of 18 isomers were purified from the mixture to a standard exceeding 99.5% with respect to other isomers. The HOMOs, LUMOs, and HOMO-LUMO gaps of the purified isomers vary from -5.673 to -5.444 eV, -3.901 to -3.729 eV, and 1.664 to 1.883 eV, respectively. We also find a correlation between HPLC retention time and the relative positions of the addends; in that generally the closer the addends are to each other the longer the retention time of the isomer, and vice versa.