Photoexcitations dynamics in pristine low bandgap π-conjugated copolymers

We present a comprehensive review on the optical properties in pristine low bandgap copolymers, namely PTB7 and PDTP–DFBT, which are used as electron donors in copolymer/phenyl C71 butyric acid methyl ester blends for high efficiency solar cell devices. The copolymer backbone chain comprises of donor (D) and acceptor (A) moieties, which lower the band gap to the near-IR spectral region. Unlike traditional π-conjugated polymers in which the primary photoexcitations are singlet excitons (SE), in D–A copolymers we find at short times coexistence of two primary photoexcitation species, namely SE and triplet–triplet (TT) pairs, which are directly photogenerated upon photon absorption from the ground state within 300 fs, our transient time resolution. Using the transient magnetophotoinduced absorption (t-MPA) spectroscopy, we reveal the spin coupling between the SE and TT spin states from their correlated t-MPA responses. In addition, we show that the TT species dissociates into two individual triplet excitons (TE) in the picosecond time scale; however, the two-geminate TEs are entangled and maintain their spin coherence into the microsecond time domain.