Angular-Shaped 4,9-Dialkylnaphthodithiophene-Based Octacyclic Ladder-Type Non-Fullerene Acceptors for High Efficiency Ternary-Blend Organic Photovoltaics

An angular-shaped 4,9-didodecylnaphthodithiophene-based octacyclic ladder-type structure was developed. This new ladder-type donor (LD) was coupled with electron-withdrawing IC and FIC units to form two A-LD-A type non-fullerene acceptor materials, NCIC and NCFIC. NCIC and NCFIC as the n-type acceptors are blended with a p-type donor PBDB-T to form the complementary absorption and suitable energy level alignments. The binary-blend PBDB-T:NCIC and PBDB-T:NCFIC devices achieved an efficiency of 7.3% and 7.5%, respectively. PC71BM was incorporated to form D1:A1:A2 ternary blends which further strengthen the absorption at shorter wavelengths. Introduction of PC71BM not only efficiently improves the absorption but also provides multiple channels for exciton dissociation and electron transport to dramatically improve Jsc. It is interesting to find that the Voc of the ternary-blend devices is reversely in proportional to the added amount of PC71BM. The device using the PBDB-T:NCIC:PC71BM (1:1:1 in wt %) showed an improved PCE of 8.32%. Moreover, the optimized device using the PBDB-T:NCFIC:PC71BM (1:1:1.5 in wt %) blend achieved the highest efficiency of 9.18%.