All Roads Lead to Rome: Isomers with Divergent Cathode Modification Mechanisms toward Ohmic Contact

Cathode interfacial layers (CILs) hold utmost importance for achieving ohmic contact at the organic semiconductor-cathode interface of organic photovoltaic devices. Delving deep into diverse design principles and working mechanisms is of great significance for designing novel CILs with high performance. Herein, two novel nonamine-based CILs are designed: one featuring a cyclopentadiene unit, designated as CIL-cp; while the other, lacking cyclopentadiene, is referred to as CIL-ph, which is an isomer of CIL-cp. The subtle changes in chemical structures result in distinct modification mechanisms toward ohmic contact. On one hand, the robust electron-withdrawing characteristic of cyclopentadiene endows CIL-cp with lower energy levels, resulting in an interfacial dipole at the active layer-CIL-cp interface due to electron transfer from D18 to CIL-cp. On the other hand, CIL-ph exhibits a strong interfacial dipole at the CIL-Ag interface, which significantly reduces the work function (W_F) of the silver electrode. Both CIL-cp and CIL-ph demonstrate excellent interfacial modification capability, whereas CIL-cp possesses a stronger electron extraction ability, thus leading to a high power conversion efficiency of 19.31% in the D18:L8-BO system. Our results reveal the distinctive operational mechanism of cyclopentadiene-based CILs, thus offering innovative design ideas for CIL materials.