Alkyloxime side chain enabled polythiophene donors for efficient organic solar cells

Keqiang He, Pankaj Kumar, Marwa Abd-Ellah, Haitao Liu, Xu Li, Zhifang Zhang, Jinliang Wang, Yuning Li*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

20 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Electron-withdrawing alkyloxime was, for the first time, used as a novel side chain for conjugated polymers. Two polythiophenes, PTOBT-Z with the Z-isomer alkyloxime side chains and PTOBT-Z/E with a mixture of Z- and E-isomer alkyloxime side chains, were synthesized. They possess deep highest occupied molecular orbital energies (EHOMO’s) down to -5.44 eV and wide band gaps of up to 1.94 eV, which are desirable donor characteristics for matching the non-fullerene acceptors for organic solar cells (OSCs). In addition, they exhibited excellent field effect hole mobilities of ∼10-2 cm2 V-1 s-1. OSCs using PTOBT-Z as the donor and ITIC as the acceptor achieved a high power conversion efficiency of up to 9.04%. Importantly, PTOBT-Z has a very low synthetic complexity of 23.4%. The results strongly demonstrate that alkyloxime groups are a new type of functional solubilizing side chains for developing polymer donors with both high performance and low cost.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)8796-8808
Number of pages13
JournalMacromolecules
Volume53
Issue number20
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 27 Oct 2020
Externally publishedYes

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