Issue 44, 2023

Design and synthesis of non-fused non-fullerene acceptors containing naphthobisthiadiazole for organic solar cells

Abstract

Most of the non-fullerene acceptors that have recently emerged for application in organic solar cells are based on fused rings as the central unit, typically requiring multi-step reactions that inevitably increase the overall cost of the target molecules. To explore more synthetically accessible non-fullerene acceptors, here we designed and synthesized two naphtho[1,2-c:5,6-c′]bis([1,2,5]thiadiazole) derivatives, containing fluorinated and chlorinated dicyanomethylidene-indan-1-one units as the flanking end-groups, which were denoted as NTIC-4F and NTIC-4Cl, respectively. The halogen substitution has trivial effects on the optical and frontier molecular orbital energy levels, while the fluorinated NTIC-4F showed distinct thermal properties and crystallinity compared to the chlorinated counterpart NTIC-4Cl. When blended with the electron-donating polymer PTzBI-dF, both compounds showed good miscibility and favorable molecular orientation, as shown in both atomic force microscopy and transmission electron microscopy images. After processing the PTzBI-dF:NTIC-4F or PTzBI-dF:NTIC-4Cl bulk-heterojunction layer with a trivial amount of chloronaphthalene as the solvent additive, it is noted that the film based on NTIC-4Cl showed a more favorable morphology and thus resulted in slightly higher power conversion efficiency of the organic solar cells. These findings provide guidance for the design of non-fused non-fullerene acceptors based on naphthobisthiadiazole as the central unit.

Graphical abstract: Design and synthesis of non-fused non-fullerene acceptors containing naphthobisthiadiazole for organic solar cells

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
20 Mot 2023
Accepted
13 Mph 2023
First published
16 Mph 2023

J. Mater. Chem. C, 2023,11, 15426-15434

Design and synthesis of non-fused non-fullerene acceptors containing naphthobisthiadiazole for organic solar cells

Y. Li, D. Zhang, Z. Huang, T. Zhang, N. Zheng, F. Peng, L. Ying and F. Huang, J. Mater. Chem. C, 2023, 11, 15426 DOI: 10.1039/D3TC01742G

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