Selenophene vs. thiophene in benzothiadiazole-based low energy gap donor-acceptor polymers for photovoltaic applications

A series of low energy gap polymers comprising 2,7-linked carbazole or fluorene units flanked by thiophene or selenophene repeat units as alternating donor units and benzothiadiazole with or without alkoxy substituents as alternating acceptor repeat units is reported. The effects of replacing thiophene with selenophene in this series of polymers on their optical, electrochemical and photovoltaic device performance when fabricated into bulk heterojunction solar cells using PC70BM as an acceptor are investigated. Power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) ranging from 3.34 to 5.41% are obtained with these systems. Thiophene-based polymers are found to have higher efficiency compared to comparable selenophene-based polymers. We tentatively explain such differences on the basis of reduced molar absorbance and reduced charge-carrier mobility in the selenophene-based polymers.