High‐Performance Organic Solar Cells Based on a Non‐Fullerene Acceptor with a Spiro Core

Abstract

Derived from perylenediimide (PDI) building blocks, 3D PDI molecules are considered as a type of promising structure to overcome molecular aggregation, thus improving the performance of organic solar cells. Herein, we report a novel PDI-based derivative, SCPDT-PDI , with four PDI units connected to a unique spiro core. Attributed to this novel molecular design, SCPDT-PDI exhibits a rigid 3D structure, in which the aggregation tendency of PDI chromophores could be effectively attenuated. Additionally, strong intramolecular charge transfer and high charge mobility are achieved due to the well-conjugated structure and electron-rich property of SCPDT. Therefore, fullerene-free organic solar cells based on SCPDT-PDI and PTB7-Th achieve a remarkable high efficiency of 7.11 %. Such an excellent result demonstrates the opportunity of SCPDT to be a promising building block for non-fullerene acceptors.

PDI Derivative through Fine-Tuning the Molecular Structure for Fullerene-Free Organic Solar Cells

“…The ITO-coated glass substrates were washed and pretreated. 28,29 The precursor solution of ZnO was spin-coated onto the ITO glass and annealed (200 °C, 60 min). PTB7-Th:FSP blend solution was spin-coated on the ZnO layer to form the active layer (ca.150 nm) without any thermal or solvent annealing.…”

“…28 Our previous work showed that fullerene-free OSCs based on a 3D SM acceptor SCPDT-PDI 4 can reach a modest PCE of 7.11%. 29 SCPDT-PDI 4 is composed of a SCPDT spiro core and four PDI arms, in which two pairs of PDI units are conjugated with CPDT linker. The PDI units take a twisted conformation with a dihedral angle of 59 o relative to the CPDT core.…”

“…Atomic Force Microscope (AFM), J-V curves and EQE spectra can be found in our previous papers 28,29. Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) images were operated at 200 KeV (bright field mode, Tecnai Bio twin, FEI).…”

Progress in the synthesis of perylene bisimide dyes

“…Next to the Suzuki coupling, it is the most commonly utilized reaction to couple aromatic, in particular, thiophene-based cores with PBI units. It was used to prepare a plethora of aryl-bridged systems consisting of two or more PBI chromophores with linear, 141,142 spiro 143 or other twisted linkers.…”

Diketopyrrolopyrrole-based acceptors with multi-arms for organic solar cells

“…Currently, non-fullerene acceptor materials, including small molecules and polymers, have strong electron decient units such as naphthalene diimide (NDI), 12,13 perylene diimide (PDI), [14][15][16] diketopyrrolopyrrole (DPP), [17][18][19][20] or other building blocks with electron withdrawing moieties. [21][22][23] Small molecular acceptors are normally believed to be more superior than polymeric acceptors in terms of their purity and small batch to batch variance on synthesis, which is important for industrial scale applications.…”