Novel Pyrrolo [3,4-b] Dithieno [3, 2-f:2″,3″-h] Quinoxaline-8,10 (9H)-Dione Based Wide Bandgap Conjugated Copolymers for Bulk Heterojunction Polymer Solar Cells

Mukhamed L Keshtov; Alexei R Khokhlov; Dimitry Y Godovsky; Ilya E Ostapov; Vladimir G Alekseev; Zhiyuan Xie; Giriraj Chayal; Ganesh D Sharma

doi:10.1002/marc.202200060

Novel Pyrrolo [3,4-b] Dithieno [3, 2-f:2″,3″-h] Quinoxaline-8,10 (9H)-Dione Based Wide Bandgap Conjugated Copolymers for Bulk Heterojunction Polymer Solar Cells

Macromol Rapid Commun. 2022 May;43(9):e2200060. doi: 10.1002/marc.202200060. Epub 2022 Mar 10.

Authors

Mukhamed L Keshtov¹, Alexei R Khokhlov^{1

2}, Dimitry Y Godovsky², Ilya E Ostapov¹, Vladimir G Alekseev³, Zhiyuan Xie⁴, Giriraj Chayal⁵, Ganesh D Sharma⁶

Affiliations

¹ A.N. Nesmeyanov Institute of Organoelement compounds of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Vavilova St., 28, Moscow, 119991, Russian Federation.
² Department of Physics of Polymers and Crystals, Faculty of Physics, M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, Leninskie Gory 1, Moscow, 119991, Russain Federation.
³ Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry Department, Tver State University, Sadovyi per. 35, Tver, 170002, Russian Federation.
⁴ Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry of Chinese Academy of Sciences, State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry, Changchun, 130022, China.
⁵ Department of Physics, Jai Narayan Vyas University, Jodhpur, Rajasthan, 342011, India.
⁶ Department of Physics, The LNM Institute for Information Technology, Jamdoli, Jaipur, Rajasthan, 302031, India.

PMID: 35218257
DOI: 10.1002/marc.202200060

Abstract

Two D-A copolymers consisting of fused ring pyrrolo-dithieno-quinoxaline acceptors are synthesized with different donor units, i.e., benzodithiophene (BDT) with alkylthienyl (P134) and 2-ethylhexyloxy (P117) side chains. These copolymers are used as donors and a narrow bandgap acceptor Y6 to fabricate bulk heterojunction polymer solar cell devices. Owing to the strong electron-deficient fused ring pyrrolo-bithieno-quinoxaline and weak alkyl thienyl side chains in BDT, the polymer solar cells (PSCs) based on P134:Y6 attain the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 15.42%, which is higher than the P117:Y6 counterpart (12.14%). The superior value of PCE for P134:Y6 can be associated with more well-adjusted charge transport, weak charge recombination, proficient exciton generation, and dissociation into free charge carriers and their subsequent charge collection owing to the dense π-π stacking distance and more considerable crystal coherence length for the P134:Y6 thin films. This investigation confirms the great potential of a strong acceptor-weak donor tactic for developing efficient D-A copolymers consists of quinoxaline acceptor for PSCs.

Keywords: polymer solar cells; power conversion efficiency; solvent vapor annealing; strong acceptor-weak donor (D-A) copolymers.

Abstract

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