Naphthalenediimide-alt-Fused Thiophene D-A Copolymers for the Application as Acceptor in All-Polymer Solar Cells

Three n-type alternating D-A copolymers based on a naphthalenediimide (NDI) acceptor (A) unit and three different donor (D) units with varied electron-donating strength including thiophene (P(NDI-T)), thieno[3,2-b]thiophene (P(NDI-TT)), and thieno[3,2-b; 4,5-b]dithiophene (P(NDI-TDT)), were synthesized, for the application as acceptor materials in all-polymer solar cells (all-PSCs). The effect of the donor units of thiophene, thienothiophene (TT) and thienodithiophene (TDT) on the physicochemical and photovoltaic properties of the n-type D-A copolymers was systematically investigated. It was found that the absorption spectrum is red-shifted and the energy band gap (E-g) is reduced for the NDI-based D-A copolymers with increasing number of thiophene rings in the thiophene or fused thiophene donor units. All-PSCs were fabricated with the medium band gap conjugated polymer J51 (E-g of ca 1.9 eV) as polymer donor and the n-type D-A copolymers as acceptor. The power conversion efficiency reached 2.59 %, 3.70% and 5.10% for the all-PSCs with P(NDI-T), P(NDI-TT), and P(NDI-TDT) as acceptor, respectively. The results indicate that a larger conjugated fused molecular plane with more thiophene rings as donor units in the NDI-based D-A copolymers is beneficial to reduce the band gap, broaden the absorption and enhance the photovoltaic performance of n-type D-A copolymer acceptors.