Tianyue Zheng

Synthesis and Photovoltaic Effect in Dithieno[2,3‐d:2′,3′‐d′]Benzo[1,2‐b:4,5‐b′]dithiophene‐Based Conjugated Polymers

The recent surge of enthusiasm in bulk-heterojunction (BHJ) organic photovoltaics (OPVs) is driven by their potential for fabricating fl exible and light-weight solar cells via facile, lowcost solution processing techniques. [ 1 ] New materials are crucial in order for OPVs to mature fully from research and development into cost effective products. The power conversion effi ciency (PCE) of large-area OPV solar cells is still inferior to the corresponding inorganic devices and should be continuously improved through major advances in new materials and enhancing our understanding of structure-property relationships. [ 2– 6 ]

Exceptional Single-Molecule Transport Properties of Ladder-Type Heteroacene Molecular Wires

A series of ladder-type fused heteroacenes consisting of thiophenes and benzothiophenes were synthesized and functionalized with thiol groups for single-molecule electrical measurements via a scanning tunneling microscopy break-junction method. It was found that this molecular wire system possesses exceptional charge transport properties with weak length dependence. The tunneling decay constant β was estimated to be 0.088 and 0.047 Å(-1) under 0.1 and 0.5 bias, respectively, which is one of the lowest β values among other non-metal-containing molecular wires, indicating that a planar ladder structure favors charge transport. Transition voltage spectroscopy showed that the energy barrier decreases as the length of the molecule increases. The general trend of the energy offsets derived from the transition voltage via the Newns-Anderson model agrees well with that of the Fermi/HOMO energy level difference. Nonequilibrium Greens function/density functional theory was used to further investigate the transport process in these molecular wires.

Optical properties of low bandgap copolymer PTB7 for organic photovoltaic applications

We used both cw and transient spectroscopies for studying the optical properties and photoexcitations in the low bandgap copolymer PTB7 that has been used in organic photovoltaic applications (OPV). Surprisingly we observed two primary photoexcitations that are generated within ~150 fs (our time resolution); we identify them as singlet exciton (S1) and triplet-pair (1TT). The singlet exciton has been considered to be the only primary photoexcitation in regular π-conjugated polymers and is related with a transient absorption band that peaks at an energy value close to the exciton binding energy (~0.4 eV in PTB7). The TT pair is a novel photoexcitation species in low band-gap π-conjugated copolymers. It has an absorption band close to that of isolated triplet exciton, and may readily dissociate at the donoracceptor interfaces in the PTB7/fullerene blend. This finding may explain the underlying mechanism for the high obtained power conversion efficiency in OPV devices based on the PTB7 copolymer.