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Introducing alkoxy groups as outer side chains and substituents of π-bridges obtains high-performance medium-bandgap polymerized small molecule acceptors

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The medium-bandgap polymerized small molecule acceptors (PSMAs) have broad application scenarios. However, the effort in the molecular design of the high-performance medium-bandgap PSMAs is limited. In this article, we introduce alkoxy groups as outer side chains and as substituents of the thiophene π-bridges of the high-performance PSMA PY-IT to synthesize a medium-bandgap PSMA PO-TO. Due to that the non-covalent interaction between the alkoxy groups and the terminal groups of the small molecule acceptor (SMA) unit can weaken the intramolecular charge transfer (ICT) effect, the bandgap of PO-TO is enlarged and its absorption is blue-shifted compared with PY-IT, while the absorbance of PO-TO solution and film is enhanced significantly compare with that of PY-IT. When blended PO-TO with the polymer donor PBQx-TF, the corresponding all-polymer solar cells (all-PSCs) exhibit an open-circuit voltage (Voc) exceeding 1.04 V with a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 13.75%. Furthermore, PO-TO was used as the third component to fabricate ternary all-PSCs with PBQx-TF as the polymer donor and PY-IT as the main polymer acceptor, and the ternary all-PSCs based on PBQx-TF:PY-IT:PO-TO (1:1:0.2, w/w/w) demonstrated a high PCE of 17.71% with simultaneously improved Voc of 0.940 V, short-circuit current density (Jsc) of 24.60 mA cm−2 and fill factor (FF) of 76.81%. In comparison, the binary all-PSCs based on PBQx-TF:PY-IT showed a PCE of 16.77%. This result indicates that introducing alkoxy groups is a promising strategy for synthesizing high-performance medium-bandgap PSMAs.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2019YFA0705900), the Ministry of Science and Technology, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51820105003, 21734008, 52203248, 61904181, 52173188), the Key Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDPB13) and the Basic and Applied Basic Research Major Program of Guangdong Province (2019B030302007).

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  1. These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, CAS Key Laboratory of Organic Solids, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China

    Yufei Gong, Tianwei Zou, Xiaojun Li, Hongmei Zhuo, Shucheng Qin, Guangpei Sun, Lei Meng & Yongfang Li

  2. School of Chemical Science, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Yufei Gong, Tianwei Zou, Xiaojun Li, Hongmei Zhuo, Shucheng Qin, Guangpei Sun, Lei Meng & Yongfang Li

  3. Laboratory of Advanced Optoelectronic Materials, College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Soochow University, Suzhou, 215123, China

    Yongfang Li

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Supporting information The supporting information is available online at https://chem.scichina.com and https://link.springer.com/journal/11426. The supporting materials are published as submitted, without typesetting or editing. The responsibility for scientific accuracy and content remains entirely with the authors.

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Introducing alkoxy groups as outer side chains and substituents of π-bridges obtains high-performance medium-bandgap polymerized small molecule acceptors

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Gong, Y., Zou, T., Li, X. et al. Introducing alkoxy groups as outer side chains and substituents of π-bridges obtains high-performance medium-bandgap polymerized small molecule acceptors. Sci. China Chem. 66, 2912–2920 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11426-023-1773-0

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