A Fully Non-fused Ring Acceptor with Planar Backbone and Near-IR Absorption for High Performance Polymer Solar Cells

Fused-ring electron acceptors have made significant progress in recent years, while the development of fully non-fused ring acceptors has been unsatisfactory. Here, two fully non-fused ring acceptors, o-4TBC-2F and m-4TBC-2F, were designed and synthesized. By regulating the location of the hexyloxy chains, o-4TBC-2F formed planar backbones, while m-4TBC-2F displayed a twisted backbone. Additionally, the o-4TBC-2F film showed a markedly red-shifted absorption after thermal annealing, which indicated the formation of J-aggregates. For fabrication of organic solar cells (OSCs), PBDB-T was used as a donor and blended with the two acceptors. The o-4TBC-2F-based blend films displayed higher charge mobilities, lower energy loss and a higher power conversion efficiency (PCE). The optimized devices based on o-4TBC-2F gave a PCE of 10.26 %, which was much higher than those based on m-4TBC-2F at 2.63 %, and it is one of the highest reported PCE values for fully non-fused ring electron acceptors.