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Orthogonal solubility in fully conjugated donor-acceptor block copolymers: Compatibilizers for polymer/fullerene bulk-heterojunction solar cells

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Abstract

Donor-acceptor (D-A) type fully conjugated block copolymer systems have been rarely reported due to the challenges in synthetic approaches to prepare well-defined low-polydispersity products. In this work, fully conjugated block copolymers are synthesized in a one-pot reaction through Stille coupling polycondensation, by utilizing the end-functional polymer copolymerization method. End-functional P3HT are copolymerized with AA (2,7-dibromo-9-(heptadecan-9-yl)-9H-carbazole) and BB (4,7-bis(5-(trimethylstannyl)thiophen-2-yl)benzo[c][1,2,5]thiadiazole, TBT) type monomers, respectively. The orthogonal solubility between the very soluble P3HT donor and the insoluble PCDTBT acceptor block improves the purity of block copolymers as well as distinct nano-scale phase-separation compared with other reports on miscibility of donor and acceptor polymer block. Further purification via preparative GPC is carried out to remove the excess of unreacted P3HT and free PCDTBT as well as to achieve low polydispersity of block copolymers. The chemical structure of the P3HT-b-PCDTBT block copolymers are verified via 1H-NMR, and further confirmed by FTIR spectra. The block copolymer shows broad absorption and moderate optical band gap of 1.8 eV. Furthermore, the fully conjugated block copolymer films exhibit significant fine structures, much smoother film morphology compared to P3HT/PCDTBT polymer blends. By adding a small amount of block copolymer P3HT-b-PCDTBT as a compatibilizer into the bulk-heterojunction of P3HT:PC61BM blends, polymer solar cells with an 8% increase of short circuit current (J sc and 10% increase of power conversion efficiency (PCE) are achieved owing to the improvement of the active-layer film morphology. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on donor-acceptor type fully conjugated block copolymer as an effective ternary additive in polymer: fullerene bulk heterojunction solar cells.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Flexible Electronics (KLOFE) & Institute of Advanced Materials (IAM), Jiangsu National Synergetic Innovation Center for Advanced Materials (SICAM), Nanjing Tech University (Nanjing Tech), Nanjing, 211816, China

    Shi-fan Wang, Ya-nan Liu, Jie Yang, You-tian Tao  (陶友田), Xu-dong Cao & Wei Huang  (黄维)

  2. Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China

    Jie Yang, Zhi-guo Zhang  (张志国) & Yong-fang Li

  3. Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Nanjing, 210093, China

    Yan Guo

Authors
  1. Shi-fan Wang
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  2. Ya-nan Liu
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  3. Jie Yang
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  4. You-tian Tao  (陶友田)
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  5. Yan Guo
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  6. Xu-dong Cao
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  7. Zhi-guo Zhang  (张志国)
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  8. Yong-fang Li
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  9. Wei Huang  (黄维)
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to You-tian Tao  (陶友田), Zhi-guo Zhang  (张志国) or Wei Huang  (黄维).

Additional information

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21304047), Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (No. 13KJB430017), Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education (No. 20133221120015) and Synergetic Innovation Center for Organic Electronics and Information Displays.

Invited paper for special issue of “Opto-electronic Functional Polymer”

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10118_2017_1889_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

Orthogonal Solubility in Fully Conjugated Donor-Acceptor Block Copolymers: Compatibilizers for Polymer/Fullerene Bulk-Heterojunction Solar Cells

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Wang, Sf., Liu, Yn., Yang, J. et al. Orthogonal solubility in fully conjugated donor-acceptor block copolymers: Compatibilizers for polymer/fullerene bulk-heterojunction solar cells. Chin J Polym Sci 35, 207–218 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10118-017-1889-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10118-017-1889-6

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