Effect of Ring-Fusion on Miscibility and Domain Purity: Key Factors Determining the Performance of PDI-Based Nonfullerene Organic Solar Cells

Compared to the rapid development of nonfullerene organic solar cells (OSCs) based on the state-of-the-art indacenodithiophene (IDT)-based small molecule acceptors (SMAs), the progress for perylene diimide (PDI)-based electron acceptors has lagged behind owing to the lack of understanding on the structure–morphology–performance relationship of PDI SMAs. Given the ease of synthesis for PDIs and their high intrinsic electron mobility, it is crucial to identify key material parameters that influence the polymer:PDI blend morphology and to develop rational approaches for molecular design toward high-performance PDI-based SMAs. In this study, three pairs of PDI-based SMAs with and without ring-fusion are investigated and it is found that ring-fusion and domain purity are the key structural and morphological factors determining the fill factors (FFs) and efficiencies of PDI-based nonfullerene OSCs. This data shows that nonfullerene OSCs based on the ring-fused PDI-based SMAs exhibit much higher average domain purity and thus increased charge mobilities, which lead to enhanced FFs compared to those solar cells based on nonfused PDIs. This is explained by higher Florry Huggins interaction parameters as observed by melting point depression measurements. This study suggests that increasing repulsive molecular interactions to lower the miscibility between the polymer donor and PDI acceptor is the key to improve the FF and performance of PDI-based devices.