Manipulating the Alkyl Chains of Naphthodithiophene Imide-Based Polymers to Concurrently Boost the Efficiency and Stability of Organic Solar Cells

Mingbin Su; Man Lin; Songmin Mo; Jinming Chen; Xiangyu Shen; Yonghong Xiao; Meijiang Wang; Jinping Gao; Li Dang; Xiao-Chun Huang; Feng He; Qinghe Wu

doi:10.1021/acsami.3c05668

Manipulating the Alkyl Chains of Naphthodithiophene Imide-Based Polymers to Concurrently Boost the Efficiency and Stability of Organic Solar Cells

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2023 Aug 9;15(31):37371-37380. doi: 10.1021/acsami.3c05668. Epub 2023 Jul 29.

Authors

Mingbin Su¹, Man Lin¹, Songmin Mo¹, Jinming Chen¹, Xiangyu Shen², Yonghong Xiao¹, Meijiang Wang¹, Jinping Gao¹, Li Dang¹, Xiao-Chun Huang^{1

3}, Feng He^{2

4}, Qinghe Wu^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry and Key Laboratory for Preparation and Application of Ordered Structural Materials of Guangdong, Shantou University, Shantou 515063, Guangdong, China.
² Department of Chemistry, Shenzhen Grubbs Institute, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, Guangdong, China.
³ Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Guangdong Laboratory, Shantou 515063, China.
⁴ Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Catalysis, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, Guangdong, China.

PMID: 37515570
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.3c05668

Abstract

Morphology instability holds the major responsibility for efficiency degradation of organic solar cells (OSCs). However, how to develop polymer donors simultaneously with high efficiency and excellent morphology stability remains challenging. Herein, we reported naphtho[2,1-b:3,4-b']dithiophene-5,6-imide (NDTI)-based new polymers PNDT1 and PNDT2. The alkyl chain engineering leads to high crystallinity, high hole mobility (>10^-3 cm² V^-1 S^-1), and nanofibrous film morphology, which enable PNDT2 to exhibit an efficiency of 18.13% and a remarkable FF value of 0.80. Moreover, the NDTIs have short π-π stacking and abundant short interactions, and their polymers exhibit superior morphological stability. Therefore, the PNDT2-based OSCs exhibit much better device stability than that of PNDT1, PAB-α, and benchmark polymers PM6 and D18. This work suggests the great importance of the large conjugated backbone of the monomer and alkyl chain engineering to develop high-performance and morphology-stable polymers for OSCs.

Keywords: device stability; high efficiency; naphthodithiophene imide; organic solar cells; polymer donor.