Efficient Organic Solar Cells Enabled by Simple Non‐Fused Electron Donors with Low Synthetic Complexity

ORCID
0000-0001-7481-1330
Affiliation
Key Laboratory of Photovoltaic Materials Henan University Kaifeng 475004 P. R. China
Gao, Yueyue;
ORCID
0000-0002-5668-0645
Affiliation
Henan Key Laboratory of Infrared Materials & Spectrum Measures and Applications Henan Normal University Xinxiang 453007 P. R. China
Cui, Minghuan;
ORCID
0000-0002-3384-8919
Affiliation
Key Laboratory of Semiconductor Materials Science Beijing Key Laboratory of Low Dimensional Semiconductor Materials and Devices Institute of Semiconductors Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing 100083 P. R. China
Qu, Shengchun;
ORCID
0000-0003-3039-0719
Affiliation
Fachgebiet Angewandte Nanophysik Institut für Physik & IMN MacroNano Technische Universität Ilmenau 98693 Ilmenau Germany
Zhao, Huaping;
ORCID
0000-0003-0567-7611
Affiliation
Key Laboratory of Photovoltaic Materials Henan University Kaifeng 475004 P. R. China
Shen, Zhitao;
Affiliation
Key Laboratory of Photovoltaic Materials Henan University Kaifeng 475004 P. R. China
Tan, Furui;
Affiliation
Fachgebiet Angewandte Nanophysik Institut für Physik & IMN MacroNano Technische Universität Ilmenau 98693 Ilmenau Germany
Dong, Yulian;
ORCID
0000-0002-3665-6111
Affiliation
Henan Key Laboratory of Infrared Materials & Spectrum Measures and Applications Henan Normal University Xinxiang 453007 P. R. China
Qin, Chaochao;
Affiliation
Key Laboratory of Semiconductor Materials Science Beijing Key Laboratory of Low Dimensional Semiconductor Materials and Devices Institute of Semiconductors Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing 100083 P. R. China
Wang, Zhijie;
Affiliation
Key Laboratory of Photovoltaic Materials Henan University Kaifeng 475004 P. R. China
Zhang, Weifeng;
Affiliation
Key Laboratory of Semiconductor Materials Science Beijing Key Laboratory of Low Dimensional Semiconductor Materials and Devices Institute of Semiconductors Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing 100083 P. R. China
Wang, Zhangguo;
ORCID
0000-0001-5048-7433
Affiliation
Fachgebiet Angewandte Nanophysik Institut für Physik & IMN MacroNano Technische Universität Ilmenau 98693 Ilmenau Germany
Lei, Yong

Abstract Fused‐ring electron donors boost the efficiency of organic solar cells (OSCs), but they suffer from high cost and low yield for their large synthetic complexity (SC > 30%). Herein, the authors develop a series of simple non‐fused‐ring electron donors, PF1 and PF2, which alternately consist of furan‐3‐carboxylate and 2,2′‐bithiophene. Note that PF1 and PF2 present very small SC of 9.7% for their inexpensive raw materials, facile synthesis, and high synthetic yield. Compared to their all‐thiophene‐backbone counterpart PT‐E, two new polymers feature larger conjugated plane, resulting in higher hole mobility for them, especially a value up to ≈10 −4 cm 2 V −1 ·s for PF2 with longer alkyl side chain. Meanwhile, PF1 and PF2 exhibit larger dielectric constant and deeper electronic energy level versus PT‐E. Benefiting from the better physicochemical properties, the efficiencies of PF1‐ and PF2‐based devices are improved by ≈16.7% and ≈71.3% relative to that PT‐E‐based devices, respectively. Furthermore, the optimized PF2‐based devices with introducing PC 71 BM as the third component deliver a higher efficiency of 12.40%. The work not only indicates that furan‐3‐carboxylate is a simple yet efficient building block for constructing non‐fused‐ring polymers but also provides a promising electron donor PF2 for the low‐cost production of OSCs.

A simple structure non‐fused‐ring electron donor PF2 alternately consisting of furan‐3‐carboxylate and 2,2′‐bithiophene presents very small synthetic complexity of 9.7% as well as low material cost of ≈19.0 $ g −1 . More importantly, PF2 delivers a high efficiency of 12.4% coupled with strong operational stability. image

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