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arXiv · 1706.08074

New 3,3'-(ethane-1, 2-diylidene)bis(indolin-2-one) (EBI)-based small molecule semiconductors for organic solar cells

Mylene Le Borgne·Jesse Quinn·Jaime Martín·Natalie Stingelin·Yuning Li·Guillaume Wantz
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Abstract

A series of donor-acceptor-donor (D-A-D) structured small-molecule compounds, with 3,3'-(ethane-1,2-diylidene)bis(indolin-2-one) (EBI) as a novel electron acceptor building block coupled with various electron donor end-capping moieties (thiophene, bithiophene and benzofuran), were synthesized and characterized. When the fused-ring benzofuran is combined to EBI (EBI-BF), the molecules displayed a perfectly planar conformation and afforded the best charge tranport properties among these EBI compounds with a hole mobility of up to 0.021 cm2 V-1 s-1. All EBI-based small molecules were used as donor material along with a PC61BM acceptor for the fabrication of solution-processed bulk-heterojunction (BHJ) solar cells. The best performing photovoltaic devices are based on the EBI derivative using the bithiophene end-capping moiety (EBI-2T) with a maximum power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 1.92%, owing to the broad absorption spectra of EBI-2T and the appropriate morphology of the BHJ. With the aim of establishing a correlation between the molecular structure and the thin film morphology, differential scanning calorimetry, atomic force microscopy and X-ray diffraction analysis were performed on neat and blend films of each material.

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Mylene Le Borgne, Jesse Quinn, Jaime Martín, Natalie Stingelin, Yuning Li, Guillaume Wantz. 2017-06-25. New 3,3'-(ethane-1, 2-diylidene)bis(indolin-2-one) (EBI)-based small molecule semiconductors for organic solar cells. https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.08074

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