Nonfused Ring Electron Acceptors for Efficient Organic Solar Cells Enabled by Multiple Intramolecular Conformational Locks

Nonfused ring electron acceptors (NFREAs) have become a research hotspot of organic solar cells (OSCs) due to their facile synthesis. However, efficient NFREAs not only need to maintain the advantages of FREAs but also need to optimize the molecular structure of the conjugate backbone to achieve good planarity. Therefore, choosing the appropriate building blocks is a prerequisite for achieving efficient OSCs. Here, two simple NFREAs 2T2CSi-4F and 4T2CSi-4F, based on diester-thieno[3,2-b]thiophene (2T2C) as the central core unit and 4,4-di-2-ethylhexyl-dithieno[3,2-b:2′,3′-d]silole (DTSi) or thieno[3,2-b]thiophene (TT) as the conjugated linking unit, were designed and synthesized. The density function theory results manifest that the oxygen atom of the thiophene ester group can form O···S interaction with the sulfur atom. Introducing noncovalent interactions can form multiple intramolecular conformational locks, which greatly enhance the molecular planarity. In addition, 2T2CSi-4F with a symmetrical structure exhibits red-shifted absorption, shallower lowest unoccupied molecular orbital energy levels, and stronger crystallinity than 4T2CSi-4F. Therefore, the PBDB-T:2T2CSi-4F device with favorable molecular packing and morphology achieves a higher power conversion efficiency of 10.04%. Our work demonstrates that the 2T2C unit and multimolecular conformational lock strategy are conducive to the development of efficient NFREAs.