A series of tetrathiophene‐based fully non‐fused ring acceptors (4T‐1, 4T‐2, 4T‐3, and 4T‐4), which can be paired with the star donor polymer PBDB‐T to fabricate highly efficient organic solar cells are developed. Tailoring the size of lateral chains can tune the solubility and packing mode of acceptor molecules in neat and blend films. It is found that the incorporation of 2‐ethylhexyl chains can effectively change the compatibility with the donor polymer PBDB‐T, and an encouraging power conversion efficiency of 10.15% is accomplished by 4T‐3‐based organic solar cells. It also presents good compatibility with the other polymer donor and an even higher power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 12.04% is achieved based on D18:4T‐3 blend, which is the champion PCE for the fully non‐fused acceptors. Importantly, these inexpensive tetrathiophene fully non‐fused ring acceptors provide cost‐effective photovoltaic performance. The results demonstrate a high photovoltaic performance from synthetically inexpensive materials could be achieved by the rational design of non‐fused ring acceptor molecules.

We precisely design and synthesize two A−π–D−π–A type dipyran-cored nonfullerene acceptors (NFAs) Ph-DTDP o -OT and Ph-DTDP i -OT with oxygen atoms at the outer and inner positions, respectively. 3-Hexyloxythiophene is used as the π-spacer to expand the effective conjugation length of the acceptors. These two NFAs possess similar optical band gaps and energy levels. However, the position of the oxygen atom at the dipyran core can markedly influence the molecular packing and aggregation behavior of the resulted acceptors. Ph-DTDP o -OT with a strong intermolecular affinity tends to form larger aggregates blending with PBDB-T, leading to a lower photovoltaic performance; Ph-DTDP i -OT presents good miscibility with PBDB-T and the blend films preferentially adopt a face-on orientation. Ph-DTDP i -OT-based devices display high and balanced hole and electron mobilities, leading to an optimal power conversion efficiency of 11.38%, which is much higher than those of Ph-DTDP o -OT-based ones (7.60%). Moreover, Ph-DTDP i -OT-based devices also exhibit a lower nonradiative recombination voltage loss of 0.268 eV. Our work demonstrates that the π-spacer and chemical structure of the core unit can greatly influence the molecular packing and the morphology of blend films, which are critical to the photovoltaic performance of devices.

The rapid advance of fused-ring electron acceptors (FREAs) has made them a potential substitute to fullerene-based acceptors and offered new avenues for the construction of organic solar cells (OSCs). Nonfused-ring acceptors (NFRAs) could significantly reduce the synthetic cost while achieving reasonable power conversion efficiencies (PCEs). Widely used fullerene acceptors have been applied as a second acceptor to regulate the morphology, absorption, and electron transport. To take full advantage of both nonfullerene and fullerene acceptors at the same time, we rationally designed and synthesized two novel NFRAs with phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) as the lateral pendent. With the incorporation of fullerene pendent in PCBM-C6 and PCBM-C10, varied UV–vis absorption and photoluminescence (PL) quenching behaviors were observed, and isotropic diffraction patterns were obtained via grazing incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering (GIWAXS) measurements. The bulky, spherical, and electronic isotropic fullerene pendent could effectively suppress severe molecular aggregation and form the preferred blend morphology. This strategy significantly improved the efficiencies for exciton separation and charge collection relative to the control acceptor CH 3 COO-C6. Finally, the V oc, J sc, and fill factor (FF) of PCBM-C10-based devices were simultaneously improved and an enhanced PCE of 13.55% was accomplished.

D ermatophytosis caused byTrichophyton rubrum is the most common cutaneous fungal infection worldwide (1), which represents the cause of between 80% and 90% of all chronic and recurrent infections (2). These infections establish an important public health problem because of the prolonged treatment required for the disease, because of the frequent recurrence of infection, and because they are generally considered difficult to manage (3). Reliable in vitro susceptibility testing would therefore be useful for selecting the most suitable antifungal treatment. For many years, griseofulvin was the only approved systemic antidermatophytic agent (4). However, nowadays, many potent antifungal agents are available for the treatment of dermatophytosis, such as allylamines and triazoles, which have more potent activity and fewer side effects (5-19). The expansion of information on in vitro susceptibility testing of dermatophytes to new antifungal agents will help in the selection and development of antifungal drug regimens.The aim of the current study was to compare in vitro the activities of three newer triazoles, voriconazole, posaconazole, and isavuconazole, and four established antifungal agents against T. rubrum infection. One hundred eleven clinical isolates of T. rubrum were collected from seven dermatology clinics in Shanghai, China. Morphological identifications were confirmed by sequence-based analysis of the internal transcribed spacer of the rRNA gene region. The in vitro activities of seven antifungal agents were determined according to the CLSI reference guideline M38-A2 (20), with minor modifications. Two reference strains, Trichophyton mentagrophytes (strain ATCC MYA-4439) and Candida parapsilosis (strain ATCC 22019), were included as quality controls. Student's t test with the statistical SPSS package (version 9.0) was used, and P values of Ͻ0.05 were considered statistically significant. Table 1 lists the MIC ranges, geometric mean (GM) MICs, MIC 50 s, and MIC 90 s of seven antifungal agents against 111 T. rubrum strains. Terbinafine, voriconazole, posaconazole, isavuconazole, itraconazole, and griseofulvin had low MICs against all tested strains, whereas fluconazole did not show inhibitory effects. Similar results have been achieved in other studies (Table 2); however, limited data are available for the newer triazoles isavuconazole and posaconazole.Terbinafine was one of the most effective antifungal agents against T. rubrum among the 7 fungal agents tested, and our findings confirm those of previous studies (5-19) ( Table 2). We compared the in vitro activities of the 3 newer triazoles isavuconazole, posaconazole, and voriconazole with that of itraconazole. Three newer triazoles offered good in vitro activity against T. rubrum (Table 1). All isolates were far more susceptible to the 3 newer triazoles than to itraconazole (Table 1) and comparable to those reported by other studies (7,9,10,14,17,18).Isavuconazole is a novel broad-spectrum triazole agent and has the same mechanism of action as the other tr...