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Updated: May 20, 2026

Morphology Control for Fully Printable Organic–Inorganic Bulk-heterojunction Solar Cells Based on a Ti-alkoxide and Semiconducting Polymer
Published on: January 10, 2017
Using cyclopenta[2,1-b:3,4-c']dithiophene-4-one as a building block for low-bandgap conjugated copolymers applied in
Wei Zhang1, Jiamin Cao, Ying Liu
1National Center for Nanoscience and Technology, Beijing, China.
Abstract:
A novel electron-accepting unit cyclopenta[2,1-b:3,4-c']dithiophene-4-one (CPDTO-c'), which is an isomer of CPDTO-b' was developed. CPDTO-c' can be incorporated into the D-A backbone through 5, 7 positions. The 2 position of CPDTO-c' can be easily functionalized with an electron-withdrawing chain. By copolymerizing CPDTO-c' with four different donor units: benzo[1,2-b:4,5-b']dithiophene (BDT), dithieno[3,2-b:2',3'-d]silole (DTS), carbazole, and fluorene, four new conjugated copolymers P1-P4 were obtained. All these polymers have good solubility and low-lying HOMO energy levels (-5.41 ∼ -5.92 eV). Among them, P1 and P2 exhibit broad absorption and narrow optical bandgaps of 1.91 and 1.72 eV, respectively. Solar cells based on P1/PC(71) BM afforded a PCE up to 2.72% and a high V(oc) up to ∼0.9 V.
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