Molecular engineering strategy for high efficiency fullerene-free organic solar cells using conjugated 1,8-naphthalimide and fluorenone building blocks
Article
Article Title | Molecular engineering strategy for high efficiency fullerene-free organic solar cells using conjugated 1,8-naphthalimide and fluorenone building blocks |
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ERA Journal ID | 40638 |
Article Category | Article |
Authors | Do, Thu Trang (Author), Pham, Hong Duc (Author), Manzhos, Sergei (Author), Bell, John M (Author) and Sonar, Prashant (Author) |
Journal Title | ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces |
Journal Citation | 9 (20), pp. 16967-16976 |
Number of Pages | 10 |
Year | 2017 |
Publisher | American Chemical Society |
Place of Publication | United States |
ISSN | 1944-8244 |
1944-8252 | |
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.6b16395 |
Web Address (URL) | https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsami.6b16395 |
Abstract | We designed, synthesized, and characterized a series of novel electron deficient small molecule nonfullerene acceptors based on 1,8-naphthalimide (NAI) and 9-fluorenone (FN) with different branched alkyl chains using various techniques. These molecules are based on an acceptor-donor-acceptor-donor-acceptor (A1-D-A2-D-A1) molecular design configuration with NAI as the end-capping acceptor (A1), FN as electron-withdrawing central (A2) group, and thiophene ring as a donor (D) unit. These materials are named as NAI-FN-NAI (BO) and NAI-FN-NAI (HD) where BO and HD represent butyloctyl and hexyldecyl alkyl groups, respectively. To further modify energy levels of these materials, we converted the weak electron withdrawing ketonic group (C=O) attached to the FN moiety of NAI-FN-NAI (BO) to a stronger electron withdrawing cyano group (C≡N) to obtain the compound NAI-FCN-NAI (BO) by keeping the same alkyl chain. The optical, electrochemical, and thermal properties of the new acceptors were studied. The materials exhibited higher to medium band gaps, low lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) energy levels, and highly thermally stable properties. Organic solar cell devices employing conventional poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) a donor polymer and the newly designed small molecules as the acceptor were investigated. Among all new materials, organic solar cell devices based on NAI-FN-NAI (BO) as an acceptor exhibit the highest performance with an open circuit voltage (VOC) of 0.88 V, a short-circuit current density (JSC) of 9.1 mAcm-2, a fill factor (FF) of 45%, and an overall power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 3.6%. This is the first report of 9-fluorenone based nonfullerene acceptor with P3HT donor in organic solar cell devices with such a promising performance. |
Keywords | 1.8-naphthalimide; 9-fluorenone; nonfullerene; electron acceptors; organic solar cells |
ANZSRC Field of Research 2020 | 401699. Materials engineering not elsewhere classified |
Public Notes | Files associated with this item cannot be displayed due to copyright restrictions. |
Byline Affiliations | Queensland University of Technology |
National University of Singapore | |
Open access url | https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsami.6b16395 |
Institution of Origin | University of Southern Queensland |
https://research.usq.edu.au/item/q5x2v/molecular-engineering-strategy-for-high-efficiency-fullerene-free-organic-solar-cells-using-conjugated-1-8-naphthalimide-and-fluorenone-building-blocks
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