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Asymmetric Alkoxy and Alkyl Substitution on Nonfullerene Acceptors Enabling High‐Performance Organic Solar Cells
Author(s) -
Chen Yuzhong,
Bai Fujin,
Peng Zhengxing,
Zhu Lei,
Zhang Jianquan,
Zou Xinhui,
Qin Yunpeng,
Kim Ha Kyung,
Yuan Jun,
Ma LikKuen,
Zhang Jie,
Yu Han,
Chow Philip C. Y.,
Huang Fei,
Zou Yingping,
Ade Harald,
Liu Feng,
Yan He
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
advanced energy materials
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 10.08
H-Index - 220
eISSN - 1614-6840
pISSN - 1614-6832
DOI - 10.1002/aenm.202003141
Subject(s) - alkoxy group , organic solar cell , alkyl , solubility , materials science , small molecule , molecule , substitution (logic) , solar cell , combinatorial chemistry , organic chemistry , chemistry , polymer , optoelectronics , computer science , composite material , programming language , biochemistry
In this paper, a strategy of asymmetric alkyl and alkoxy substitution is applied to state‐of‐the‐art Y‐series nonfullerene acceptors (NFAs), and it achieves great performance in organic solar cell (OSC) devices. Since alkoxy groups can have a significant influence on the material properties of NFAs, alkoxy substitution is applied to the Y6 molecule in a symmetric manner. The resulting molecule (named Y6‐2O), despite showing improved open‐circuit voltage ( V oc ), yields extremely poor performance due to low solubility and excessive aggregation properties, a change that is due to the conformational locking effect of alkoxy groups. In contrast, asymmetric alkyl and alkoxy substitution on Y6, yields a molecule named Y6‐1O that can maintain the positive effect of V oc improvement and obtain reasonably good solubility. The resulting molecule Y6‐1O enables highly efficient nonfullerene OSCs with 17.6% efficiency and the asymmetric side‐chain strategy has the potential to be applied to other NFA‐material systems to further improve their performance.