TY - JOUR
T1 - All-Polymer Solar Cells Incorporating Readily Accessible Naphthalene Diimide and Isoindigo Acceptor Polymers for Improved Light Harvesting
AU - Pankow, Robert M.
AU - Wu, Jianglin
AU - Harbuzaru, Alexandra
AU - Kerwin, Brendan
AU - Chen, Yao
AU - Ortiz, Rocío Ponce
AU - Facchetti, Antonio
AU - Marks, Tobin J.
N1 - Funding Information:
A.F. and T.J.M. acknowledge support of this research by the US Office of Naval Research under contract N00014-20-1-2116. R.M.P acknowledges support from the Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Program. We also thank the IMSERC NMR facility at Northwestern University, which received support from the Soft and Hybrid Nanotechnology Experimental (SHyNE) Resource (NSF ECCS-2025633) International Institute of Nanotechnology, and Northwestern University. Also, the MatCI Facility that receives support from the National Science Foundation MRSEC Program (NSF DMR-1720139) of the Northwestern University Materials Research Center and the GIANTFab core facility at Northwestern University. GIANTFab is supported by the Institute for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern and the Office of the Vice President for Research at Northwestern. This work also acknowledges the U.S. Department of Energy under contract no. DE-AC02-05CH11231 at the beamline 8-ID-E of the Advanced Photon Source, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. The work at University of Malaga was financially supported by Junta de Andalucía (projects UMA18-FEDERJA-080 and P18-FR-4559) and MICINN (project PID2019-110305GB-I00). The authors also thankfully acknowledge the computer resources, technical expertise, and assistance provided by the Supercomputing and Bioinformatics (SCBI) centre of the University of Malaga.
Funding Information:
A.F. and T.J.M. acknowledge support of this research by the US Office of Naval Research under contract N00014-20-1-2116. R.M.P acknowledges support from the Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Program. We also thank the IMSERC NMR facility at Northwestern University, which received support from the Soft and Hybrid Nanotechnology Experimental (SHyNE) Resource (NSF ECCS-2025633), International Institute of Nanotechnology, and Northwestern University. Also, the MatCI Facility that receives support from the National Science Foundation MRSEC Program (NSF DMR-1720139) of the Northwestern University Materials Research Center and the GIANTFab core facility at Northwestern University. GIANTFab is supported by the Institute for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern and the Office of the Vice President for Research at Northwestern. This work also acknowledges the U.S. Department of Energy under contract no. DE-AC02-05CH11231 at the beamline 8-ID-E of the Advanced Photon Source, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. The work at University of Malaga was financially supported by Junta de Andalucía (projects UMA18-FEDERJA-080 and P18-FR-4559) and MICINN (project PID2019-110305GB-I00). The authors also thankfully acknowledge the computer resources, technical expertise, and assistance provided by the Supercomputing and Bioinformatics (SCBI) centre of the University of Malaga.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.
PY - 2022/4/12
Y1 - 2022/4/12
N2 - The development of readily accessible polymer acceptors is imperative to preserve the guiding principles of all-polymer solar cells as a low-cost and sustainable technology for alternative energy production. In this study, we report a computationally guided design and facile synthesis of new acceptor polymers comprising the alternating copolymer, PNIT, and the corresponding random copolymer, r-PNIT, which incorporate structurally simple naphthalene diimide (NDI) and isoindigo (IID) units. PNIT was prepared via direct arylation polymerization (DArP), which proceeds via C-H activation and avoids the use of toxic reagents and extended synthetic pathways for the monomer synthesis. PNIT has broad optical absorption in the 300-850 nm range and an enhanced absorption coefficient (47 × 103 cm-1) compared to r-PNIT (300-850 nm; 40 × 103 cm-1). When incorporated in all-polymer solar cells (APSCs) using PBDB-T as the donor polymer, PBDB-T:PNIT provides greater than two times the average (maximum) power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 5.18 ± 0.08 (5.32)% compared to that of PBDB-T:r-PNIT, 2.38 ± 0.16 (2.57)%, due to increased Jsc (10.36 vs 5.45 mA cm-2) and fill factor (FF) (0.58 vs 0.50) metrics. The PBDB-T:PNIT PCE is among the highest reported for an IID-based APSC and demonstrates the viability of DArP for the synthesis of new APSC acceptor polymers. Detailed morphological and microstructural investigations using atomic force microscopy (AFM) and grazing-incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering (GIWAXS), respectively, reveal enhanced texturing for PNIT, which enhances charge transport properties as supported by space-charge-limited current (SCLC) mobility measurements.
AB - The development of readily accessible polymer acceptors is imperative to preserve the guiding principles of all-polymer solar cells as a low-cost and sustainable technology for alternative energy production. In this study, we report a computationally guided design and facile synthesis of new acceptor polymers comprising the alternating copolymer, PNIT, and the corresponding random copolymer, r-PNIT, which incorporate structurally simple naphthalene diimide (NDI) and isoindigo (IID) units. PNIT was prepared via direct arylation polymerization (DArP), which proceeds via C-H activation and avoids the use of toxic reagents and extended synthetic pathways for the monomer synthesis. PNIT has broad optical absorption in the 300-850 nm range and an enhanced absorption coefficient (47 × 103 cm-1) compared to r-PNIT (300-850 nm; 40 × 103 cm-1). When incorporated in all-polymer solar cells (APSCs) using PBDB-T as the donor polymer, PBDB-T:PNIT provides greater than two times the average (maximum) power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 5.18 ± 0.08 (5.32)% compared to that of PBDB-T:r-PNIT, 2.38 ± 0.16 (2.57)%, due to increased Jsc (10.36 vs 5.45 mA cm-2) and fill factor (FF) (0.58 vs 0.50) metrics. The PBDB-T:PNIT PCE is among the highest reported for an IID-based APSC and demonstrates the viability of DArP for the synthesis of new APSC acceptor polymers. Detailed morphological and microstructural investigations using atomic force microscopy (AFM) and grazing-incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering (GIWAXS), respectively, reveal enhanced texturing for PNIT, which enhances charge transport properties as supported by space-charge-limited current (SCLC) mobility measurements.
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UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85127843178&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1021/acs.chemmater.2c00065
DO - 10.1021/acs.chemmater.2c00065
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85127843178
VL - 34
SP - 3267
EP - 3279
JO - Chemistry of Materials
JF - Chemistry of Materials
SN - 0897-4756
IS - 7
ER -