Distannylated Bithiophene Imide: Enabling High-Performance n-Type Polymer Semiconductors with an Acceptor-Acceptor Backbone

Yongqiang Shi; Han Guo; Jiachen Huang; Xianhe Zhang; Ziang Wu; Kun Yang; Yujie Zhang; Kui Feng; Han Young Woo; Rocio Ponce Ortiz; Ming Zhou; Xugang Guo

doi:10.1002/anie.202002292

Distannylated Bithiophene Imide: Enabling High-Performance n-Type Polymer Semiconductors with an Acceptor-Acceptor Backbone

Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2020 Aug 17;59(34):14449-14457. doi: 10.1002/anie.202002292. Epub 2020 Jul 7.

Authors

Yongqiang Shi^{1

2}, Han Guo², Jiachen Huang², Xianhe Zhang², Ziang Wu³, Kun Yang², Yujie Zhang², Kui Feng², Han Young Woo³, Rocio Ponce Ortiz⁴, Ming Zhou¹, Xugang Guo²

Affiliations

¹ School of New Energy and Materials and State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and Exploitation Engineering, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu, Sichuan, 610500, China.
² Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), No. 1088, Xueyuan Road, Shenzhen, Guangdong, 518055, China.
³ Department of Chemistry, College of Science, Korea University, 145 Anam-ro, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul, 136-713, Republic of Korea.
⁴ Department of Physical Chemistry, University of Málaga, Campus de Teatinos s/n, Málaga, 29071, Spain.

PMID: 32472603
DOI: 10.1002/anie.202002292

Abstract

A distannylated electron-deficient bithiophene imide (BTI-Tin) monomer was synthesized and polymerized with imide-functionalized co-units to afford homopolymer PBTI and copolymer P(BTI-BTI2), both featuring an acceptor-acceptor backbone with high molecular weight. Both polymers exhibited excellent unipolar n-type character in transistors with electron mobility up to 2.60 cm² V^-1 s^-1 . When applied as acceptor materials in all-polymer solar cells, PBTI and P(BTI-BTI2) achieved high power-conversion efficiency (PCE) of 6.67 % and 8.61 %, respectively. The PCE (6.67 %) of polymer PBTI, synthesized from the distannylated monomer, is much higher than that (0.14 %) of the same polymer PBTI*, synthesized from typical dibrominated monomer. The 8.61 % PCE of copolymer P(BTI-BTI2) is also higher than those (<1 %) of homopolymers synthesized from dibrominated monomers. The results demonstrate the success of BTI-Tin for accessing n-type polymers with greatly improved device performance.

Keywords: all-polymer solar cells; n-type acceptor-acceptor polymers; organic thin-film transistors; polymer molecular weight; stannylated bithiophene imide.

Abstract

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