Volume 42, Issue 7 pp. 752-759
Comprehensive Report

Semicrystalline Unfused Polymer Donors with Backbone Halogenation toward Cost-Effective Organic Solar Cells

Yuxin Kong

Yuxin Kong

School of Materials Science and Engineering, Xi'an University of Science and Technology, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710054 China

Jiangsu Key Laboratory for Carbon-Based Functional Materials & Devices, Institute of Functional Nano & Soft Materials (FUNSOM), Soochow University, 199 Ren'ai Road, Suzhou, Jiangsu, 215123 China

These authors contributed equally to this work.

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Shijie Ju

Shijie Ju

School of Materials Science and Engineering, Xi'an University of Science and Technology, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710054 China

These authors contributed equally to this work.

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Hongmei Qin

Corresponding Author

Hongmei Qin

School of Materials Science and Engineering, Xi'an University of Science and Technology, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710054 China

E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]Search for more papers by this author
Min Hun Jee

Min Hun Jee

Department of Chemistry, Korea University, Seoul, 02841 Republic of Korea

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Simeng Xia

Simeng Xia

School of Materials Science and Engineering, Xi'an University of Science and Technology, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710054 China

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Jiaqi Ren

Jiaqi Ren

School of Materials Science and Engineering, Xi'an University of Science and Technology, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710054 China

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Chao Gao

Chao Gao

Xi'an Key Laboratory of Liquid Crystal and Organic Photovoltaic Materials, State Key Laboratory of Fluorine & Nitrogen Chemicals, Xi'an Modern Chemistry Research Institute, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710065 China

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Jianyu Yuan

Jianyu Yuan

Jiangsu Key Laboratory for Carbon-Based Functional Materials & Devices, Institute of Functional Nano & Soft Materials (FUNSOM), Soochow University, 199 Ren'ai Road, Suzhou, Jiangsu, 215123 China

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Wenyan Su

Corresponding Author

Wenyan Su

School of Materials Science and Engineering, Xi'an University of Science and Technology, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710054 China

E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]Search for more papers by this author
Han Young Woo

Corresponding Author

Han Young Woo

Department of Chemistry, Korea University, Seoul, 02841 Republic of Korea

E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]Search for more papers by this author
Yuxiang Li

Corresponding Author

Yuxiang Li

School of Materials Science and Engineering, Xi'an University of Science and Technology, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710054 China

E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]Search for more papers by this author
First published: 06 December 2023
Citations: 3

Dedicated to the Special Issue of Organic Photovoltaic.

Comprehensive Summary

Developing novel unfused building blocks with simple synthesis and low cost is essential to advance and enrich cost-effective polymer donors; however, it remains a challenge due to the lack of efficient molecular strategies. Herein, a class of low-cost and fully unfused polymer donors with precisely regulated backbone planarity via halogenation was designed and synthesized, namely PDTBTBz-2H, PDTBTBz-2F, and PDTBTBz-2Cl. These polymer donors possess a four-step synthesis route with over 80% yield from cheap raw chemicals comparable to existing low-cost polymer donors, such as PTQ10. Benefitting from the planar backbone via incorporating the F···S non-covalent interactions, PDTBTBz-2F exhibits more robust J-type aggregation in solution and a long-ranged molecular stacking in film relative to PDTBTBz-2H and PDTBTBz-2Cl. Moreover, the systematical study of PDTBTBz-based organic solar cells (OSCs) reveals the close relationship between optimized molecular self-assembly and charge separation/transport regarding backbone halogenation when paired with the non-fullerene acceptor (Y6-BO-4F). As a result, the photovoltaic devices based on semicrystalline PDTBTBz-2F achieved a promising power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 12.37%. Our work highlighted the influence of backbone halogenation on the molecular self-assembly properties and a potential unfused backbone motif for further developing cost-effective OSCs.image

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