Issue 48, 2020

Ring fusion in tetrathienylethene cored perylene diimide tetramers affords acceptors with strong and broad absorption in the near-UV to visible region

Abstract

In this work, we designed and synthesized two novel perylene diimide (PDI) tetramers based on a tetrathienylethene core, named TTE-PDI4 and FTTE-PDI4, and investigated their application as non-fullerene acceptors for organic photovoltaics. The free rotation of PDIs and adjacent thiophene units renders TTE-PDI4 with a highly twisted molecular geometry. The ring fusion of TTE-PDI4 yields FTTE-PDI4, a more rigid molecule with increased intramolecular stacking. Interestingly, TTE-PDI4 and FTTE-PDI4 possess similar energy levels but very different UV-Vis absorptions, with the latter showing strong broad-band absorption with multiple sharp peaks in the 300–600 nm region. Through time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) calculations, we show that this broad absorption spectrum in FTTE-PDI4 arises from the combination of multiple bright transitions in the visible region with a strong vibronic progression, tentatively assigned to the dominant C[double bond, length as m-dash]C stretching mode. TTE-PDI4, despite having a lower energy absorption onset, shows weaker absorption at long wavelengths. Due to its higher absorption as well as its increased rigidity, FTTE-PDI4 shows a higher photocurrent and hence a higher power conversion efficiency (PCE), of 6.6%, when blended with the polymer donor PFBDB-T than TTE-PDI4 based blends (PCE of 3.8%). The greater rigidity of FTTE-PDI4 is likely to contribute to the good fill factor of the blend devices. Potential for further improvement through reducing voltage losses is identified.

Graphical abstract: Ring fusion in tetrathienylethene cored perylene diimide tetramers affords acceptors with strong and broad absorption in the near-UV to visible region

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
28 Aug 2020
Accepted
17 Nov 2020
First published
17 Nov 2020
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

J. Mater. Chem. C, 2020,8, 17237-17244

Ring fusion in tetrathienylethene cored perylene diimide tetramers affords acceptors with strong and broad absorption in the near-UV to visible region

Q. He, F. D. Eisner, D. Pearce, T. Hodsden, E. Rezasoltani, D. Medranda, Z. Fei, J. Nelson and M. Heeney, J. Mater. Chem. C, 2020, 8, 17237 DOI: 10.1039/D0TC04110F

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