5 research outputs found
Quadrites and Crossed-Chain Crystal Structures in Polymer Semiconductors
Many high-performance conjugated
polymers for organic photovoltaics
and transistors crystallize such that chains are parallel, resulting
in significant anisotropy of the nanoscale charge transport properties.
Here we demonstrate an unusual intercrystallite relationship where
thin lamellae adopt a preferred epitaxial relationship with crossed-chains
at the interface. The crossed-chains may allow either crystal to use
the other as an “electronic shunt”, creating efficient
quasi-three-dimensional transport pathways that reduce the severity
of grain boundaries and defects in limiting transport
Mithrene Is a Self-Assembling Robustly Blue Luminescent Metal–Organic Chalcogenolate Assembly for 2D Optoelectronic Applications
Crystalline
metal–organic chalcogenolate assemblies are
a class of semiconducting hybrid nanomaterials that consist of well-defined
arrays of nanostructured inorganic coordination polymers with a supramolecular
lattice of organic ligands. Growing crystals of periodic arrays of
nanostructured hybrid chalcogenolates at biphasic liquid–liquid
interfaces has been used to prepare semiconducting hybrid materials
for potential applications in sensing, catalysis, mechanochemistry,
organic light-emitting devices, and photovoltaics. However, a distinct
lack of a systematic framework for quantifying the relationship between
experimental parameters and the structure–function relationship
of the prepared materials has been one of the largest hurdles for
the emerging field of hybrid chalcogenolates and related hybrid coordination
polymer systems. Here we examine the crystallization of silver benzeneselenolate,
coined here as mithrene, at a toluene–water interface and demonstrate
that silver ion concentration is the critical variable for controlling
the morphology of the semiconducting crystals. Confocal microscopy
is used to demonstrate that the blue luminescence of the material
is robust across all morphologies. The role of metal ion concentration
on the structure and morphology of the hybrid chalcogenolate is considered,
and the properties of the crystalline and amorphous products are compared.
Grazing-incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering is used to demonstrate
that the crystallographic phase of the crystals in sparse layers is
uniform across all morphologies. The observation of blue luminescence
can be used as a reliable proxy for the crystalline phase in future
work. The straightforward synthetic preparation for and robust optoelectronic
properties of silver benzeneÂselenolate make it an ideal model
system for the development of device and sensor applications leveraging
the emerging class of metal–organic chalcogenolates
Molecular Engineering for Large Open-Circuit Voltage and Low Energy Loss in Around 10% Non-fullerene Organic Photovoltaics
Recent
efforts in organic photovoltaics (OPVs) have been devoted
to obtaining low-bandgap non-fullerene acceptors (NFAs) for high photocurrent
generation. However, the low-lying lowest unoccupied molecular orbital
(LUMO) level in narrow bandgap NFAs typically results in a small energy
difference (Δ<i>E</i><sub>DA</sub>) between the LUMO
of the acceptor and the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO)
of the donor, leading to low open-circuit voltage (<i>V</i><sub>OC</sub>). The trade-off between Δ<i>E</i><sub>DA</sub> and photocurrent generation significantly limits the simultaneous
enhancement of both <i>V</i><sub>OC</sub> and short-circuit
current density (<i>J</i><sub>SC</sub>). Here, we report
a new medium-bandgap NFA, IDTT-T, containing a weakly electron-withdrawing <i>N</i>-ethyl thiabarbituric acid terminal group on each end of
the indacenodithienothiophene (IDTT) core. When paired with a benchmark
low-bandgap PTB7-th polymer donor, simultaneous enhancement of both
Δ<i>E</i><sub>DA</sub> and absorption spectral coverage
was realized. The OPV devices yield a <i>V</i><sub>OC</sub> of 1.01 V, corresponding to a low energy loss of 0.57 eV in around
10% efficiency single-junction NFA OPVs. The design demonstrates a
working principle to concurrently increase Δ<i>E</i><sub>DA</sub> and photocurrent generation for high <i>V</i><sub>OC</sub> and PCE in bulk fullerene-free heterojunction OPVs
A Modular Strategy for Fully Conjugated Donor–Acceptor Block Copolymers
A novel strategy for the synthesis of fully conjugated
donor–acceptor
block copolymers, in a single reaction step employing Stille coupling
polymerization of end-functional polythiophene and AA + BB monomers,
is presented. The unique donor–acceptor structure of these
block copolymers provides a rich self-assembly behavior, with the
first example of a fully conjugated donor–acceptor block copolymer
having two separate crystalline domains being obtained