Aromatic organic compounds can be used as electrode materials in rechargeable batteries and are expected to advance the development of both anode and cathode materials for sodium‐ion batteries (SIBs). However, most aromatic organic compounds assessed as anode materials in SIBs to date exhibit significant degradation issues under fast‐charge/discharge conditions and unsatisfying long‐term cycling performance. Now, a molecular design concept is presented for improving the stability of organic compounds for battery electrodes. The molecular design of the investigated compound, [2.2.2.2]paracyclophane‐1,9,17,25‐tetraene (PCT), can stabilize the neutral state by local aromaticity and the doubly reduced state by global aromaticity, resulting in an anode material with extraordinarily stable cycling performance and outstanding performance under fast‐charge/discharge conditions, demonstrating an exciting new path for the development of electrode materials for SIBs and other types of batteries.

A substantial amount of evidence indicates a relevant role played by the nonlocal electron-phonon couplings in the mechanism of charge transport in organic semiconductors. In this work, we compute the nonlocal electron-phonon coupling for the prototypical molecular semiconductors rubrene and tetracene using the phonon modes obtained from ab initio methods. We do not make the rigid molecular approximation allowing a mixing of intra- and intermolecular modes, and we use a supercell approach to sample the momentum space. Indeed, we find that some low-frequency intramolecular modes are mixed with the rigid-molecule translations and rotations in the modes with the strongest electron-phonon coupling. To rationalize the results we propose a convenient decomposition of the delocalized lattice modes into molecular-based modes.

Parent fullerene structures have extremely challenging solubility, which limits their processability and miscibility with host materials in bulk heterojunction OPVs; an issue which has been addressed through the production of more soluble derivatives using simple cycloaddition chemistry. Bis[60]PCBM (PCBM = phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester) (dimethyl 4,4′-[61,62-diphenly,3′H,3″Hdicyclopropa(C 60 I h)[5,6]fulleren-1,9:X,Ydiyl]dibutanoate) is one such derivative and one of the most utilized solubilized fullerenes, which is easy to synthesize, highly processable, and solar cells based on this material have high power conversion efficiencies. [11-18] The addition of two solubilizing addends to C 60 results in a large number of structural isomers however, each with varying energetic properties (influencing device voltage) and morphological properties (influencing device current). Despite this, bis[60]PCBM is synthesized and used as an isomeric mixture, and the role of individual isomers on morphological, spectroscopic, and device performance is very poorly understood. In a previous study, Dennis and coworkers separated the 19 structural isomers of bis[60]PCBM and characterized them using a combination of NMR, UV-vis, and retention times by HPLC. [19,20] Although the performance Solubilized fullerene derivatives have revolutionized the development of organic photovoltaic devices, acting as excellent electron acceptors. The addition of solubilizing addends to the fullerene cage results in a large number of isomers, which are generally employed as isomeric mixtures. Moreover, a significant number of these isomers are chiral, which further adds to the isomeric complexity. The opportunities presented by single-isomer, and particularly single-enantiomer, fullerenes in organic electronic materials and devices are poorly understood however. Here, ten pairs of enantiomers are separated from the 19 structural isomers of bis[60]phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester, using them to elucidate important chiroptical relationships and demonstrating their application to a circularly polarized light (CPL)-detecting device. Larger chiroptical responses are found, occurring through the inherent chirality of the fullerene. When used in a single-enantiomer organic field-effect transistor, the potential to discriminate CPL with a fast light response time and with a very high photocurrent dissymmetry factor (g ph = 1.27 ± 0.06) is demonstrated. This study thus provides key strategies to design fullerenes with large chiroptical responses for use as chiral components of organic electronic devices. It is anticipated that this data will position chiral fullerenes as an exciting material class for the growing field of chiral electronic technologies.

A generative recurrent neural network (RNN) model was developed to target and explore the chemical space of electronic donor–acceptor oligomers effectively.