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Published on: January 10, 2017
Fine-Tuning of Siloxane Pendant Distance for Achieving Highly Efficient Eco-Friendly Nonfullerene Solar Cells
Dong Yuan1, Lianjie Zhang1, Junwu Chen1
1Institute of Polymer Optoelectronic Materials & Devices, State Key Laboratory of Luminescent Materials & Devices, South China University of Technology, 510640, Guangzhou, P. R. China.
Abstract:
Side-chain engineering has been proved to show profound impact on polymer properties and blend morphology. Herein, the critical role of siloxane-terminated alkoxy side chains was revealed by a tiny decorating method through which the molar content of siloxane-terminated alkoxy side chain was fixed to 5 %, and its alkyl linker was the only tuning factor. The pentylene, heptylene, and nonylene linkers were designed and used to synthesize wide-bandgap polymers PQSi505, PQSi705, and PQSi905, respectively. Interestingly, the siloxane pendant of combinatory side chain exhibited a distinct impact on molecular packing when its branching position shifted slightly. Among the three polymers, PQSi705 had the strongest aggregation and the highest packing order. Finally, toluene-processed organic solar cells (OSCs) based on PQSi705 and Y6-BO achieved the best power conversion efficiency of 15.77 %. This work suggests that siloxane pendant can serve as a powerful modulator to enhance the photovoltaic performance of OSCs.
