Journal
JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY C
Volume 124, Issue 36, Pages 19457-19466Publisher
AMER CHEMICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpcc.0c04988
Keywords
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Funding
- U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering [DE-SC0010419]
- German Federal Office of Science and Technology (BMBF) [MEDOS FKZ: 03EK3505I]
- Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
- Universitat zu Koln alumni fellowship fund
- NSF [DMR-0520547]
- European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the SINE2020 project [654000]
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Merocyanines (MCs) are a versatile class of small-molecule dyes. Their optoelectronic properties are easily tunable by chemically controlling their donor-acceptor strength, and their structural properties can be tuned by simple side-chain substitution. This manuscript demonstrates a novel series of MCs featuring an indoline donor with varying hydrocarbon side-chain length (from 6 to 12 carbons) and a tert-butyl-thiazole acceptor, labeled InTBT. Bulk heterojunction organic photovoltaics are fabricated with a [6,6]-phenyl-C-61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) acceptor and characterized. Films composed of I8TBT:PCBM and I9TBT:PCBM produced the highest power conversion efficiency of 4.5%, which suggests that the morphology is optimized by controlling the side-chain length. Hierarchical structure formation in InTBT:PCBM films is studied using grazing incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXRD), small-angle neutron scattering (SANS), and atomic force microscopy (AFM). When mixed with PCBM, InTBTs with <= 8 side-chain carbons form pure crystalline domains, while InTBTs with >= 9 side-chain carbons mix well with PCBM. SANS demonstrates that increasing side-chain length increases the InTBT-rich domain size. In addition, a branched hexyl-dodecyl side-chain IHDTBT:PCBM film was studied and found to exhibit the worst-performance organic photovoltaic (OPV) device. The large-branched side chain inhibited mixing between IHDTBT and PCBM resulting in large segregated phases.
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