PCBM Disperse-Red Ester with Strong Visible-Light Absorption: Implication of Molecular Design and Morphological Control for Organic Solar Cells

TitlePCBM Disperse-Red Ester with Strong Visible-Light Absorption: Implication of Molecular Design and Morphological Control for Organic Solar Cells
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2012
AuthorsWang, Mingfeng, Eneida Chesnut, Yanming Sun, Minghong Tong, Michele Guide, Yuan Zhang, N.D. Treat, Alessandro Varotto, Andy Mayer, M.L. Chabinyc, Thuc-Quyen Nguyen, and F. Wudl
JournalJOURNAL OF PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY C
Volume116
Pagination1313-1321
Date PublishedJAN 12
ISSN1932-7447
AbstractA new dyad of fullerene/disperse-red, denoted as PCBDR, strongly absorbs visible light in the range of 400-600 nm. PCBDR showed advantages over PCBM in several aspects such as enhanced visible-light absorption, improved solubility, and the possibility to facilitate cascaded electron transfer. P3HT:PCBDR bulk heterojunction (BHJ) solar cells, nevertheless, so far have not outperformed P3HT:PCBM BHJ solar cells under similar conditions. Among factors that affect the efficiency of P3HT:PCBDR BHJ solar cells, the suppression of the interchain interaction of P3HT in the P3HT:PCBDR blend played a major role, presumably due to better interfacial miscibility between P3HT and PCBDR than that in blends of P3HT:PCBM. In contrast, benzoporphyrin (BP), due to its unique crystallinity, morphology, and nonsolubility, afforded a better control of the morphology and the interface of the p/n junctions. As a consequence, the performance of solar cells with BP/PCBDR as the active layer was comparable to that of BP/PCBM solar cells. These results suggest that a synergistic approach of synthetic design and morphological control in devices is critical to develop new electron acceptors for highly efficient organic/polymer solar cells.
DOI10.1021/jp209782c