Over 13% Efficient Organic Solar Cells Based on Low-Cost Pentacyclic A-DA′D-A-Type Nonfullerene Acceptor

Recent studies have almost focused on finding active layer materials with extended π-conjugation structures for high-performance organic solar cells (OSCs). However, with the extension of conjugate length, the synthesis difficulty and cost of materials will increase. Achieving high efficiency while reducing material costs is a prerequisite for the commercialization of OSCs. Herein, two low-cost A-DA′D-A-type (where A and D represent an electron-withdrawing unit and an electron-donating unit, respectively) nonfullerene acceptors (Y25,Y26) are synthesized with pentacyclic fused backbone as the DA′D electron-deficient core and 5,6-difluoro-3-(dicyandiamethyl) indigo as the end groups. Compared with classical Y series acceptors with heptacyclic backbone, although Y25 and Y26 own the reduced conjugated length, they still show moderate performance (11.65% and 13.34%), and the cost of synthesis is significantly reduced. Therefore, we provide a new molecular design idea for commercially efficient nonfullerene OSCs acceptors. We also find that adding alkyl chains to the β site of thiophenes is beneficial to obtaining the reduced energetic disorder, dominant molecular stacking, and desirable morphology, which can facilitate charge carrier transport and prompt higher short-circuit current density (J_sc) as well as fill factor.