journal article·2020-02-26

Crucial Role of Fluorine in Fully Alkylated Ladder-Type Carbazole-Based Nonfullerene Organic Solar Cells

Qiao He, Munazza Shahid, Xuechen Jiao, Eliot Gann, Flurin D. Eisner, Tingmang Wu, Zhuping Fei, Thomas D. Anthopoulos, Christopher R. McNeill, Martin Heeney

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Abstract

Two fused ladder-type nonfullerene acceptors, DTCCIC and DTCCIC-4F, based on an electron-donating alkylated dithienocyclopentacarbazole core flanked by electron-withdrawing nonfluorinated or fluorinated 1,1-dicyanomethylene-3-indanone (IC or IC-4F), are prepared and utilized in organic solar cells (OSCs). The two new molecules reveal planar structures and strong aggregation behavior, and fluorination is shown to red-shift the optical band gap and downshift energy levels. OSCs based on DTCCIC-4F exhibit a power conversion efficiency of 12.6%, much higher than that of DTCCIC-based devices (6.2%). Microstructural studies reveal that while both acceptors are highly crystalline, bulk heterojunction blends based on the nonfluorinated DTCCIC result in overly coarse domains, while blends based on the fluorinated DTCCIC-4F exhibit a more optimal nanoscale morphology. These results highlight the importance of end group fluorination in controlling molecular aggregation and miscibility.
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Research context

OpenAlex topics: Organic Electronics and Photovoltaics · Conducting polymers and applications · Perovskite Materials and Applications

SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.

Affiliations

Department of Chemistry and Centre for Plastic Electronics, White City Campus, Imperial College London, London W12 0BZ, U.K.

Department of Chemistry, School of Science, University of Management and Technology, Lahore 54770, Pakistan

Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria 3800, Australia

Materials Measurement Science Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, Maryland 20899, United States

Department of Physics and Centre for Plastic Electronics, South Kensington Campus, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, U.K.

Institute of Molecular Plus, Tianjin Key Laboratory of Molecular Optoelectronic Science, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, P. R. China

KAUST Solar Centre, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal 23955-6900, Saudi Arabia

Funding

Royal Society · National Research Foundation of Korea · King Abdullah University of Science and Technology · China Scholarship Council · Daphne Jackson Trust · Wolfson Foundation · National Natural Science Foundation of China

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