journal article·2025-01Open access

Effects of Alkyl Spacer Length in Carbazole‐Based Self‐Assembled Monolayer Materials on Molecular Conformation and Organic Solar Cell Performance

Qiaonan Chen, Kangbo Sun, Leandro R. Franco, Jingnan Wu, Lars Öhrström, Xianjie Liu, Maureen Gumbo, Mailde S. Ozório, C. Moyses Araujo, Guangye Zhang, André Johansson, Ellen Moons, Mats Fahlman, Donghong Yu, Yufei Wang, Ergang Wang

Advanced Science· Volume 12· Issue 4

Abstract

Abstract Carbazole‐based self‐assembled monolayer (SAM) materials as hole transport layers (HTL) have led organic solar cells (OSCs) to state‐of‐the‐art photovoltaic performance. Nonetheless, the impact of the alkyl spacer length of SAMs remains inadequately understood. To improve the knowledge, four dichloride‐substituted carbazole‐based SAMs (from 2Cl‐2PACz to 2Cl‐5PACz) with spacer lengths of 2–5 carbon atoms is developed. Single crystal analyses reveal that SAMs with shorter spacers exhibit stronger intermolecular interactions and denser packing. The molecular conformation of SAMs significantly impacts their molecular footprint and coverage on ITO. These factors result in the highest coverage of 2Cl‐2PACz and the lowest coverage for 2Cl‐3PACz on ITO. OSCs based on PM6:L8‐BO with 2Cl‐2PACz as HTL achieved high efficiencies of 18.95% and 18.62% with and without methanol rinsing of the ITO/SAMs anodes, corresponding to monolayer and multilayer structures, respectively. In contrast, OSCs utilizing the other SAMs showed decreased efficiencies as spacer length increased. The superior performance of 2Cl‐2PACz can be attributed to its shorter spacer, which reduces series resistance, hole tunneling distance, and barrier. This work provides valuable insights into the design of SAMs for high‐performance OSCs.
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Research context

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

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

Affiliations

Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Chalmers University of Technology Göteborg SE‐412 96 Sweden

College of New Materials and New Energies Shenzhen Technology University Shenzhen 518118 China

Department of Engineering and Physics Karlstad University Karlstad 65188 Sweden

Department of Science and Technology Laboratory of Organic Electronics (LOE) Linköping University Norrköping 60174 Sweden

Department of Chemistry University of Copenhagen Universitetsparken 5 Copenhagen DK‐2100 Denmark

Materials Theory Division Department of Physics and Astronomy Uppsala University Uppsala 75120 Sweden

Departmetnt of Chemistry and Bioscience Aalborg University Aalborg DK‐9220 Denmark

Sino‐Danish Center for Education and Research Aarhus DK‐8000 Denmark

School of Materials Science and Engineering Zhengzhou University Zhengzhou 450001 China

Funding

Vetenskapsrådet · Svenska Forskningsrådet Formas · Energimyndigheten · Stiftelsen för Strategisk Forskning · Carl Tryggers Stiftelse för Vetenskaplig Forskning · Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation of Guangdong Province · National Natural Science Foundation of China

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