Sarah Holliday

Non-fullerene electron acceptors for use in organic solar cells.

Conspectus The active layer in a solution processed organic photovoltaic device comprises a light absorbing electron donor semiconductor, typically a polymer, and an electron accepting fullerene acceptor. Although there has been huge effort targeted to optimize the absorbing, energetic, and transport properties of the donor material, fullerenes remain as the exclusive electron acceptor in all high performance devices. Very recently, some new non-fullerene acceptors have been demonstrated to outperform fullerenes in comparative devices. This Account describes this progress, discussing molecular design considerations and the structure–property relationships that are emerging. The motivation to replace fullerene acceptors stems from their synthetic inflexibility, leading to constraints in manipulating frontier energy levels, as well as poor absorption in the solar spectrum range, and an inherent tendency to undergo postfabrication crystallization, resulting in device instability. New acceptors have to address these limitations, providing tunable absorption with high extinction coefficients, thus contributing to device photocurrent. The ability to vary and optimize the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) energy level for a specific donor polymer is also an important requirement, ensuring minimal energy loss on electron transfer and as high an internal voltage as possible. Initially perylene diimide acceptors were evaluated as promising acceptor materials. These electron deficient aromatic molecules can exhibit good electron transport, facilitated by close packed herringbone crystal motifs, and their energy levels can be synthetically tuned. The principal drawback of this class of materials, their tendency to crystallize on too large a length scale for an optimal heterojunction nanostructure, has been shown to be overcome through introduction of conformation twisting through steric effects. This has been primarily achieved by coupling two units together, forming dimers with a large intramolecular twist, which suppresses both nucleation and crystal growth. The generic design concept of rotationally symmetrical aromatic small molecules with extended π orbital delocalization, including polyaromatic hydrocarbons, phthalocyanines, etc., has also provided some excellent small molecule acceptors. In most cases, additional electron withdrawing functionality, such as imide or ester groups, can be incorporated to stabilize the LUMO and improve properties. New calamitic acceptors have been developed, where molecular orbital hybridization of electron rich and poor segments can be judiciously employed to precisely control energy levels. Conformation and intermolecular associations can be controlled by peripheral functionalization leading to optimization of crystallization length scales. In particular, the use of rhodanine end groups, coupled electronically through short bridged aromatic chains, has been a successful strategy, with promising device efficiencies attributed to high lying LUMO energy levels and subsequently large open circuit voltages.

High-efficiency and air-stable P3HT-based polymer solar cells with a new non-fullerene acceptor

Solution-processed organic photovoltaics (OPV) offer the attractive prospect of low-cost, light-weight and environmentally benign solar energy production. The highest efficiency OPV at present use low-bandgap donor polymers, many of which suffer from problems with stability and synthetic scalability. They also rely on fullerene-based acceptors, which themselves have issues with cost, stability and limited spectral absorption. Here we present a new non-fullerene acceptor that has been specifically designed to give improved performance alongside the wide bandgap donor poly(3-hexylthiophene), a polymer with significantly better prospects for commercial OPV due to its relative scalability and stability. Thanks to the well-matched optoelectronic and morphological properties of these materials, efficiencies of 6.4% are achieved which is the highest reported for fullerene-free P3HT devices. In addition, dramatically improved air stability is demonstrated relative to other high-efficiency OPV, showing the excellent potential of this new material combination for future technological applications.

Reducing the efficiency-stability-cost gap of organic photovoltaics with highly efficient and stable small molecule acceptor ternary solar cells

Technological deployment of organic photovoltaic modules requires improvements in device light-conversion efficiency and stability while keeping material costs low. Here we demonstrate highly efficient and stable solar cells using a ternary approach, wherein two non-fullerene acceptors are combined with both a scalable and affordable donor polymer, poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT), and a high-efficiency, low-bandgap polymer in a single-layer bulk-heterojunction device. The addition of a strongly absorbing small molecule acceptor into a P3HT-based non-fullerene blend increases the device efficiency up to 7.7 ± 0.1% without any solvent additives. The improvement is assigned to changes in microstructure that reduce charge recombination and increase the photovoltage, and to improved light harvesting across the visible region. The stability of P3HT-based devices in ambient conditions is also significantly improved relative to polymer:fullerene devices. Combined with a low-bandgap donor polymer (PBDTTT-EFT, also known as PCE10), the two mixed acceptors also lead to solar cells with 11.0 ± 0.4% efficiency and a high open-circuit voltage of 1.03 ± 0.01 V.

A Rhodanine Flanked Nonfullerene Acceptor for Solution-Processed Organic Photovoltaics

A novel small molecule, FBR, bearing 3-ethylrhodanine flanking groups was synthesized as a nonfullerene electron acceptor for solution-processed bulk heterojunction organic photovoltaics (OPV). A straightforward synthesis route was employed, offering the potential for large scale preparation of this material. Inverted OPV devices employing poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) as the donor polymer and FBR as the acceptor gave power conversion efficiencies (PCE) up to 4.1%. Transient and steady state optical spectroscopies indicated efficient, ultrafast charge generation and efficient photocurrent generation from both donor and acceptor. Ultrafast transient absorption spectroscopy was used to investigate polaron generation efficiency as well as recombination dynamics. It was determined that the P3HT:FBR blend is highly intermixed, leading to increased charge generation relative to comparative devices with P3HT:PC60BM, but also faster recombination due to a nonideal morphology in which, in contrast to P3HT:PC60BM devices, the acceptor does not aggregate enough to create appropriate percolation pathways that prevent fast nongeminate recombination. Despite this nonoptimal morphology the P3HT:FBR devices exhibit better performance than P3HT:PC60BM devices, used as control, demonstrating that this acceptor shows great promise for further optimization.

Chalcogenophene comonomer comparison in small band gap diketopyrrolopyrrole-based conjugated polymers for high-performing field-effect transistors and organic solar cells.

The design, synthesis, and characterization of a series of diketopyrrolopyrrole-based copolymers with different chalcogenophene comonomers (thiophene, selenophene, and tellurophene) for use in field-effect transistors and organic photovoltaic devices are reported. The effect of the heteroatom substitution on the optical, electrochemical, and photovoltaic properties and charge carrier mobilities of these polymers is discussed. The results indicate that by increasing the size of the chalcogen atom (S < Se < Te), polymer band gaps are narrowed mainly due to LUMO energy level stabilization. In addition, the larger heteroatomic size also increases intermolecular heteroatom-heteroatom interactions facilitating the formation of polymer aggregates leading to enhanced field-effect mobilities of 1.6 cm(2)/(V s). Bulk heterojunction solar cells based on the chalcogenophene polymer series blended with fullerene derivatives show good photovoltaic properties, with power conversion efficiencies ranging from 7.1-8.8%. A high photoresponse in the near-infrared (NIR) region with excellent photocurrents above 20 mA cm(-2) was achieved for all polymers, making these highly efficient low band gap polymers promising candidates for use in tandem solar cells.

Efficient truxenone-based acceptors for organic photovoltaics

Two electron-deficient truxenone derivatives are designed and synthesised for organic photovoltaic applications. The promise of this class of compounds as acceptor materials is illustrated by the fabrication of efficient bilayer solar cells with a subphthalocyanine (SubPc) donor, clearly outperforming reference cells with a soluble fullerene derivative as the acceptor.

Electron-deficient truxenone derivatives and their use in organic photovoltaics

A series of electron-deficient truxenone derivatives are investigated as fullerene alternatives in organic photovoltaic applications. These new electron-accepting molecules have easily tunable absorption profiles, more than ten-fold higher absorptivities than PCBM, slightly higher electron affinities than PCBM and clearly defined and highly reversible reductive characteristics. Fabrication of efficient bilayer solar cells with a subphthalocyanine (SubPc) donor illustrates the promise of this class of materials as electron acceptors in organic solar cells.

Barbiturate end-capped non-fullerene acceptors for organic solar cells: tuning acceptor energetics to suppress geminate recombination losses

We report the synthesis of two barbiturate end-capped non-fullerene acceptors and demonstrate their efficient function in high voltage output organic solar cells. The acceptor with the lower LUMO level is shown to exhibit suppressed geminate recombination losses, resulting in enhanced photocurrent generation and higher overall device efficiency.

Organic/inorganic epitaxy: commensurate epitaxial growth of truxenone on Cu (111)

The growth of monolayers of truxenone on Cu (111) is investigated using scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and low energy electron diffraction (LEED). Two distinct molecular packing motifs are observed that exist individually at low and high coverage, and coexist at intermediate states. In each case a commensurate epitaxial relationship between the molecular surface mesh and the substrate is observed.

The effect of fluorination on the surface structure of truxenones

The surface structure of partially fluorinated truxenone (F3-truxenone) molecules on Cu (111) has been probed using a combination of scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and low energy electron diffraction (LEED). Codeposition of F3-truxenone and the parent truxenone molecule leads to a mix of discrete F3-truxenone and truxenone islands on a Cu (111) surface. Due to the differences in rotational orientation of each type of molecular island proved by LEED the otherwise indistiguishable molecules can be identified in STM images.