Near-Infrared Harvesting Fullerene-Free All-Small-Molecule Organic Solar Cells Based on Porphyrin Donors

Abstract

Fullerene-free all-small-molecule organic photovoltaic cells (SM-OPVs) have attracted considerable attention because of well-defined molecular structures with low batch-to-batch variation. Porphyrin derivatives have recently emerged as one of the promising conjugated building blocks for the small-molecule (SM) donors. Herein, we first report fullerene-free SM-OPVs employing porphyrin-based donors. Three zinc porphyrin (PZn)-based SM donors, which have strong bimodal absorption in the visible region and near-infrared region, are synthesized. Constructing bulk-heterojunction (BHJ) active layers using the PZn donors and a SM acceptor, IDIC, which have complementary absorption, achieved panchromatic photon-to-current-conversion from 400 to 900 nm. The manipulation of side chains in the PZn donors considerably influenced the molecular ordering and nanomorphology of the BHJ active layers. PZn-based fullerene-free SM-OPV devices with promising power conversion efficiency of 6.13% were achieved, which also offers crucial guidance for developing fullerene-free OPVs using porphyrin derivatives.

Over 12% Efficiency Nonfullerene All‐Small‐Molecule Organic Solar Cells with Sequentially Evolved Multilength Scale Morphologies

“…For example, Hou and co‐workers have recently demonstrated high J sc over 18 mA cm −2 in NFSM‐OSCs by combining a slightly lower bandgap acceptor, IT‐4F ( E g = 1.52 eV) with a mid‐bandgap donor . However, the photoresponse for all of the high performing NFSM‐OSCs reported so far are below 820 nm, which limits the potential to further increase J sc . Considering that near‐infrared (NIR) nonfullerene acceptors ( E g < 1.4 eV) have been widely used in NFP‐OSCs to achieve high J sc of >23 mA cm −2 , it is rational to apply similar NIR absorbing acceptor/donor to NFSM‐OSCs.…”

Near‐infrared organic photoelectric materials for light‐harvesting systems: Organic photovoltaics and organic photodiodes

“…Due to the strong ICT effect between DPP and porphyrin, DPPEZnP‐THE exhibits a low bandgap of 1.37 eV, while the fabricated OPV showed a high PCE of 8.08% with a low energy loss of 0.59 eV. Hadmojo et al constructed OPV devices with DPP‐porphyrin:IDIC and achieved a promising PCE of 6.13% . Lai et al enlarged the conjugated system by covalently linking two porphyrin rings .…”

Improving the efficiencies of small molecule solar cells by solvent vapor annealing to enhance J-aggregation

“…[26][27][28] And the expanded and enhanced absorptions in J-aggregation-based films provide the potential chance to fabricate broader light response and larger short-circuit current (J SC ) solar cell devices. Some of porphyrin derivatives are near-infrared (NIR) organic semiconductors with optical bandgap less than 1.5 eV which have attracted much attention due to their great contribution to the field of NIR photodetector, 29,30 SM-OSCs, [31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41] ternary solar cells [42][43][44][45][46] and tandem solar cells. 47,48 In this contribution, we report dimer porphyrin molecule ZnP2-DPP 49 (Figure 1 .…”