Substituting Benzodithiophene with Benzodifuran in Carboxylate-Containing Polymer for High-Performance Organic Solar Cells

IF 5.1 1区化学 Q1 POLYMER SCIENCE

Macromolecules Pub Date : 2024-12-16 DOI:10.1021/acs.macromol.4c02123

Peiqing Cong, Mengzhen Du, Ailing Tang, Xianda Li, Zhi Zheng, Yitong Lei, Qing Guo, Xiangnan Sun, Dan Deng, Erjun Zhou

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Low-cost carboxylate-modified thiophene-based polymers show promising potential in organic solar cells (OSCs). Further optimizing the film morphology via simple molecular engineering to improve their power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) is significant in pursuing a cost-effective balance. Herein, we developed a new wide-bandgap polymer, TTC-F-BDF, by copolymerizing benzodifuran (BDF) with carboxylate-modified thieno[3,2-b]thiophene (TTC), which is derived from the counterpart polymer, TTC-F, which contains benzodithiophene (BDT) units. Incorporating BDF can effectively tailor molecular aggregation and packing order to optimize film morphology, thus improving charge transport, recombination, and collection processes, ultimately boosting the fill factor (FF) and PCE. The TTC-F-BDF: L8-BO-based OSCs achieved a PCE of up to 16.9% with an enhanced FF of 0.75, among the top PCE values for the carboxylate-containing copolymer-based OSCs. As a control, the TTC-F: L8-BO blends showed a PCE of 15.1%, with a moderate FF of 0.67. In Cl-BTA3 systems, TTC-F-BDF attained a higher PCE of 11.2%, compared with TTC-F (PCE = 10.0%), attributed to the improved FF (0.74 vs 0.65). Besides that, replacing BDT with a cheap BDF unit also contributes to reducing production costs. This work provides a simple and effective molecular design strategy to optimize film morphology for efficiency breakthrough in carboxylate-containing photovoltaic polymers.

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来源期刊

Macromolecules 工程技术-高分子科学

CiteScore

9.30

自引率

16.40%

发文量

942

审稿时长

2 months

期刊介绍： Macromolecules publishes original, fundamental, and impactful research on all aspects of polymer science. Topics of interest include synthesis (e.g., controlled polymerizations, polymerization catalysis, post polymerization modification, new monomer structures and polymer architectures, and polymerization mechanisms/kinetics analysis); phase behavior, thermodynamics, dynamic, and ordering/disordering phenomena (e.g., self-assembly, gelation, crystallization, solution/melt/solid-state characteristics); structure and properties (e.g., mechanical and rheological properties, surface/interfacial characteristics, electronic and transport properties); new state of the art characterization (e.g., spectroscopy, scattering, microscopy, rheology), simulation (e.g., Monte Carlo, molecular dynamics, multi-scale/coarse-grained modeling), and theoretical methods. Renewable/sustainable polymers, polymer networks, responsive polymers, electro-, magneto- and opto-active macromolecules, inorganic polymers, charge-transporting polymers (ion-containing, semiconducting, and conducting), nanostructured polymers, and polymer composites are also of interest. Typical papers published in Macromolecules showcase important and innovative concepts, experimental methods/observations, and theoretical/computational approaches that demonstrate a fundamental advance in the understanding of polymers.