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A series of acene-type conjugated molecules (1-5) containing 2-6 pyrazine units and up to 16 rectilinearly arranged fused aromatic rings were synthesized by condensation coupling of 1,2-diamines and 1,2-diketones. The energy gap of the molecules estimated from absorption edge decreases with an increase in molecular length, indicating the well-delocalized nature of the molecules. The cyclic voltammetry measurements suggest that the n-type properties of these ribbonlike pyrazine derivatives are dependent on the molecular length and the number of the pyrazine units. As the number of pyrazine units and the molecular length increase, the first reduction wave onset is shifted from -1.16 to -0.62 V (vs Ag/AgCl), corresponding to the LUMO energy levels of -3.24 and -3.78 eV, respectively. These molecules tend to aggregate in solution more readily with an increase in molecular length, as evident by (1)H NMR and UV-vis absorption spectra. Introduction of t-butyl groups in pyrene units can noticeably suppress the aggregation of these molecules in solution. High electron affinity, high environmental stability, and ease of structural modification make these compounds excellent candidates as a new class of n-type semiconductors.

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The performance of inverted perovskite solar cells is highly dependent on hole extraction and surface properties of hole transport layers. To highlight the important role of hole transport layers, a facile and simple method is developed by adding sodium chloride (NaCl) into poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS). The average power conversion efficiency of the perovskite solar cells prepared on NaCl-doped PEDOT:PSS is 17.1% with negligible hysteresis, compared favorably to the control devices (15.1%). Particularly, they exhibit markedly improved V and fill factor (FF), with the best FF as high as 81.9%. The enhancement of photovoltaic performance is ascribed to two effects. Better conductivity and hole extraction of PEDOT:PSS are observed after NaCl doping. More intriguingly, the perovskite polycrystalline film shows a preferred orientation along the (001) direction on NaCl-doped PEDOT:PSS, leading to a more uniform thin film. The comparison of the crystal structure between NaCl and MAPbCl indicates a lattice constant mismatch less than 2% and a matched chlorine atom arrangement on the (001) surface, which implies that the NaCl crystallites on the top surface of PEDOT:PSS might serve as seeds guiding the growth of perovskite crystals. This simple method is fully compatible with printing technologies to mass-produce perovskite solar cells with high efficiency and tunable crystal orientations.

In this study, we report the curing of ESO with biobased dicarboxylic acids (DCAs) with different carbon chain-lengths to synthesize fully sustainable polymers. Both non-isothermal and isothermal curing processes analysis indicated that the curing rate and activation energy decreased with increasing chain-length of DCAs. The optimum-COOH/epoxy molar ratio is 0.7 for preparation of ESO/DCA cured product with maximum degree of crosslinking. Addition of 4-N, N-dimethylaminopyridine (DMAP) as a catalyst can efficiently accelerate the curing rate and reduce activation energy. We systemtically studied the effect of chain-length of DCAs on the physical properties of cured products, and found that with increase in chain-length of DCAs, the glass transition temperature of the cured ESO/DCA decreased, the tensile strength and Young's modulus increased while elongation at break decreased, due to the decreased crosslinking density resulted from the increased chain-length between crosslinking sites. All cured ESO/DCA showed excellent thermal stability with initial decomposition temperature of higher than 340 °C.

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