A 4-Arm Small Molecule Acceptor with High Photovoltaic Performance

Xianyi Meng; Mingjie Li; Ke Jin; Lixiu Zhang; Jie Sun; Wenhua Zhang; Chenyi Yi; Junliang Yang; Feng Hao; Guan-Wu Wang; Zuo Xiao; Liming Ding

doi:10.1002/anie.202207762

A 4-Arm Small Molecule Acceptor with High Photovoltaic Performance

Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2022 Sep 19;61(38):e202207762. doi: 10.1002/anie.202207762. Epub 2022 Aug 16.

Authors

Xianyi Meng^{1

2}, Mingjie Li^{1

3}, Ke Jin¹, Lixiu Zhang¹, Jie Sun¹, Wenhua Zhang⁴, Chenyi Yi⁵, Junliang Yang⁶, Feng Hao⁷, Guan-Wu Wang³, Zuo Xiao¹, Liming Ding^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Center for Excellence in Nanoscience, Key Laboratory of Nanosystem and Hierarchical Fabrication (CAS), National Center for Nanoscience and Technology, Beijing, 100190, China.
² University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China.
³ Hefei National Research Center for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China.
⁴ School of Materials and Energy, Yunnan University, Kunming, 650091, China.
⁵ Department of Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China.
⁶ State Key Laboratory of Powder Metallurgy, School of Physics and Electronics, Central South University, Changsha, 410083, China.
⁷ School of Materials and Energy, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, 611731, China.

PMID: 35880625
DOI: 10.1002/anie.202207762

Abstract

Manipulating the backbone of small molecule acceptors (SMAs) is of particular importance in developing efficient organic solar cells (OSCs). The common design is constructing 2-arm SMAs with linear or curved backbones. Herein, we report an acceptor 4A-DFIC with a 4-arm backbone unexpectedly generated in the reaction of an electron-rich aromatic diamine and hexaketocyclohexane. Single-crystal X-ray diffraction analysis indicates the rigid and twisted molecular plane and the effective molecular stacking of 4A-DFIC in solid state. 4A-DFIC shows a low band gap of 1.40 eV and excellent light-harvesting capability from visible to near-infrared region. Binary and ternary OSCs based on 4A-DFIC gave power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) of 15.76 % and 18.60 % (certified 18.1 %), respectively, which are the highest PCEs for multi-arm SMA-based OSCs to date.

Keywords: Acceptor; Multi-Arm; Organic Solar Cells; Small Molecule; Ternary.

Grants and funding

51922032, 21961160720/National Natural Science Foundation of China