Solution-Processable Silicon Phthalocyanines in Electroluminescent and Photovoltaic Devices

Abstract

Phthalocyanines and their main group and metal complexes are important classes of organic semiconductor materials but are usually highly insoluble and so frequently need to be processed by vacuum deposition in devices. We report two highly soluble silicon phthalocyanine (SiPc) diester compounds and demonstrate their potential as organic semiconductor materials. Near-infrared (λEL = 698–709 nm) solution-processed organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) were fabricated and exhibited external quantum efficiencies (EQEs) of up to 1.4%. Binary bulk heterojunction solar cells employing P3HT or PTB7 as the donor and the SiPc as the acceptor provided power conversion efficiencies (PCE) of up to 2.7% under simulated solar illumination. Our results show that soluble SiPcs are promising materials for organic electronics.

Boron Subphthalocyanines and Silicon Phthalocyanines for Use as Active Materials in Organic Photovoltaics

“…More recent studies have explored carboxylate‐substituted silicon phthalocyanines, which may be similarly synthesized by mixing Cl 2 ‐SiPc with an excess of a carboxylic acid in refluxing diglyme or toluene, depending on the solubility of the reagent (Scheme v,vi). To date a variety of carboxylate substituents have been reported . These synthetic routes allow for a diverse range of axial substitution of SiPcs allowing a diverse range of derivatives for successful incorporation into OPVs.…”

“…Zysman‐Colman et al . have also shown the use of soluble carboxylate‐substituted SiPcs, achieving an efficiencies as high as 2.7 % when paired with PTB7 …”

Silicon phthalocyanine-decorated TiO2 mesocrystal coupled with multifunctional all-carbon structure for multistep cascade signal amplifier in photoelectrochemical immunoassay

“…Pcs and its derivatives are promising sensitized materials for photochemical energy conversion and storage owing to their excellent light-harvesting properties in the red/near-IR (Q band) regions [24]. Therefore, in this work, Pcs were utilized as sensitizer for wide-bandgap oxide semiconductor.…”

“…Phthalocyanines (Pcs) are considered as efficient photo-sensitizer to harvest light on surface of the semiconductor and have become a research hotspot in frontier areas, for instance, dye-sensitized solar cells [20], electrochromic and electroluminescent displays [21], non-linear optics [22], photovoltaic and semiconductors [23] etc. The metalloid silicon (IV) Pcs (SiPcs, a p-type semiconductor) are a particularly attractive subclass of Pcs given the low toxicity levels of silicon and their low band gap (~1.7 eV) [24]. Additionally, SiPcs play an important role in developing solar light photocatalysts owing to their excellent electronic and optical properties, especially the unique absorption in red and near infrared regions and strong electron-donating character [25].…”

Silicon Phthalocyanines as Acceptor Candidates in Mixed Solution/Evaporation Processed Planar Heterojunction Organic Photovoltaic Devices

“…Recently, SiPcs have attracted significant interest from our group and others for their integration into OPVs, both as an additive in BHJ devices [48][49][50][51] or as an acceptor or donor in either BHJ or PHJ devices [52][53][54]. We reported the use of bis(6-azidohexanoate)silicon phthalocyanine ((HxN 3 ) 2 -SiPc) as the first dual function ternary additive for OPV, which improved the device stability through cross linking while simultaneously increasing the PCE by absorbing in the near IR region [49].…”