A Benzo[1,2-b:4,5-c']Dithiophene-4,8-Dione-Based Polymer Donor Achieving an Efficiency Over 16

Pengjie Chao; Hui Chen; Yulin Zhu; Hanjian Lai; Daize Mo; Nan Zheng; Xiaoyong Chang; Hong Meng; Feng He

doi:10.1002/adma.201907059

A Benzo[1,2-b:4,5-c']Dithiophene-4,8-Dione-Based Polymer Donor Achieving an Efficiency Over 16

Adv Mater. 2020 Mar;32(10):e1907059. doi: 10.1002/adma.201907059. Epub 2020 Jan 29.

Authors

Pengjie Chao^{1

2}, Hui Chen¹, Yulin Zhu¹, Hanjian Lai¹, Daize Mo¹, Nan Zheng³, Xiaoyong Chang¹, Hong Meng², Feng He¹

Affiliations

¹ Shenzhen Grubbs Institute and Department of Chemistry, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, 518055, China.
² School of Advanced Materials, Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School, Peking University, Shenzhen, 518055, China.
³ Institute of Polymer Optoelectronic Materials and Devices, State Key Laboratory of Luminescent Materials and Devices, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510640, China.

PMID: 31995263
DOI: 10.1002/adma.201907059

Abstract

It is of great significance to develop efficient donor polymers during the rapid development of acceptor materials for nonfullerene bulk-heterojunction (BHJ) polymer solar cells. Herein, a new donor polymer, named PBTT-F, based on a strongly electron-deficient core (5,7-dibromo-2,3-bis(2-ethylhexyl)benzo[1,2-b:4,5-c']dithiophene-4,8-dione, TTDO), is developed through the design of cyclohexane-1,4-dione embedded into a thieno[3,4-b]thiophene (TT) unit. When blended with the acceptor Y6, the PBTT-F-based photovoltaic device exhibits an outstanding power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 16.1% with a very high fill factor (FF) of 77.1%. This polymer also shows high efficiency for a thick-film device, with a PCE of ≈14.2% being realized for an active layer thickness of 190 nm. In addition, the PBTT-F-based polymer solar cells also show good stability after storage for ≈700 h in a glove box, with a high PCE of ≈14.8%, which obviously shows that this kind of polymer is very promising for future commercial applications. This work provides a unique strategy for the molecular synthesis of donor polymers, and these results demonstrate that PBTT-F is a very promising donor polymer for use in polymer solar cells, providing an alternative choice for a variety of fullerene-free acceptor materials for the research community.

Keywords: benzo[1,2-b:4,5-c′]dithiophene-4,8-dione; donor polymers; nonfullerene solar cells; thieno[3,4-b]thiophene.

Abstract

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