A wide-bandgap nonplanar small molecular acceptor having indenofluorene core for non-fullerene polymer solar cells

Abstract Recently, the nonplanar non-fullerene acceptors (NFAs) are attractive in active layers in highly efficient polymer solar cells (PSCs) because of their up-shifted energy levels, improved absorption as well as charge transportation performances. However, presently nonplanar NFAs always absorb the lights in the long-wavelength region and even to near-infrared (NIR) region, which limits their further utilization in low-bandgap polymer donor-based PSCs. To further probe the performances of nonplanar NFAs in low-bandgap polymer-based PSCs, a new twisted NFA (i-IF-4F) having indenofluorene derivatives as the electron-donating fused-ring core was synthesized. Due to the relatively weak electron-donating ability of the indenofluorene core, this newly designed NFA has wide optical bandgap (1.79 eV) with absorption spectrum ranged from 450 to 690 nm, suitable lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO, −3.71 eV) and highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO, −5.55 eV) energy levels, which ensure its matching well with the typically low-bandgap polymer (PTB7-Th) to achieve complementary absorption and proper differences in energy levels. After thermal annealing treatment, the film morphologies, charge transfer properties and charge recombination performances of i-IF-4F:PTB7-Th-based device was improved to a certain degree, leading to an optimized power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 6.47%. The work in this manuscript demonstrates the applicability of wide-bandgap twisted acceptors in PSCs and the possible approach to further improve the performances of wide-bandgap nonplanar acceptors in PSCs.