Incorporation of Hexa‐peri‐hexabenzocoronene (HBC) into Carbazole–Benzo‐2,1,3‐thiadiazole Copolymers to Improve Hole Mobility and Photovoltaic Performance

Hexa-peri-hexabenzocoronene (HBC) is a discotic-shaped conjugated molecule with strong π–π stacking property, high intrinsic charge mobility, and good self-assembly properties. For a long time, however, organic photovoltaic (OPV) solar cells based on HBC demonstrated low power conversion efficiencies (PCEs). In this study, two conjugated terpolymers, poly[N-9′-heptadecanyl-2,7-carbazole-alt-5,5′-(4′,7′-di-2-thienyl-2′,1′,3′-benzothiadiazole)] (PCDTBT)-5 HBC and PCDTBT-10 HBC, were synthesized by incorporating different amounts of HBC as the third component into poly[N-9′-heptadecanyl-2,7-carbazole-alt-5,5′-(4′,7′-di-2-thienyl-2′,1′,3′-benzothiadiazole)] (PCDTBT) through Suzuki coupling polymerization. For comparison, the donor–acceptor (D–A) conjugated dipolymer PCDTBT was also synthesized to investigate the effect of HBC units on conjugated polymers. The HBC-containing polymers exhibited higher thermal stabilities, broader absorption spectra, and lower highest-occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) energy levels. In particular, the field-effect mobilities were enhanced by more than one order of magnitude after the incorporation of HBC into the conjugated polymer backbone on account of increased interchain π–π stacking interactions. The bulk heterojunction (BHJ) polymer solar cells (PSCs) fabricated with the polymers as donor and PC71BM as acceptor demonstrated gradual improvement of open-circuit voltage (VOC) and short-circuit current (JSC) with the increase in HBC content. As a result, the PCEs were improved from 3.21 % for PCDTBT to 3.78 % for PCDTBT-5 HBC and then to 4.20 % for PCDTBT-10 HBC.