B. Hemavathi

Rational design of benzodithiophene based conjugated polymers for better solar cell performance

The rational design of conjugated polymers is crucial. As photovoltaic materials they need to be optimized for high-performance polymer solar cells (PSCs). We present a concise review of conjugated polymers based on benzodithiophenes (BDTs). In this account, we have discussed the conjugated polymeric designs of various architectures; consisting of electron rich donor and electron deficient acceptor moieties in the main chain, as well as in the side chains, to facilitate effective intra-molecular charge transfer. We summarize that the application of these polymeric materials drastically influences the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of polymeric solar cells. As of now, PCEs of over 10% are reported for these polymeric materials along with fullerene derivatives.

New blue emissive conjugated small molecules with low lying HOMO energy levels for optoelectronic applications

Versatile conjugated small molecules bearing cyanopyridone core (CP1-5), composed of various donor/acceptor moieties at position -4 and -6 have been designed, developed and characterized. Their solvatochromic studies were conducted and analyzed using Lippert-Mataga, Kamlet-Taft and Catalan solvent scales and interesting results were obtained. The polarizability/dipolarity of the solvent greatly influenced the spectra. The electrochemical studies were carried out using cyclic voltammetry to calculate the HOMO-LUMO energy levels. The study revealed that the synthesized conjugated small molecules possess low lying HOMO energy levels which can be exploited for application in various fields of optoelectronics.

Synthesis of cyanopyridine based conjugated polymer

This data file contains the detailed synthetic procedure for the synthesis of two new cyanopyridine based conjugated polymer P1 and P2 along with the synthesis of its monomers. The synthesised polymers can be used for electroluminescence and photovoltaic (PV) application. The physical data of the polymers are provided in this data file along with the morphological data of the polymer thin films. The data provided here are in association with the research article entitled ‘Cyanopyridine based conjugated polymer-synthesis and characterisation’ (Hemavathi et al., 2015) [3].