A-D-A-Type Oligothiophenes Containing Benzothiadiazole Terminal Units for Small Molecule Organic Solar Cells

• Authors: Simon Steinberger , Amaresh Mishra , Gisela Schulz , Christian Uhrich , Martin Pfeiffer , Peter Bäuerle
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The electron-deficient, fused-heterocyclebenzo[c][1,2,5]thiadiazole (BTDA) is investigated as acceptor
group in A-D-A-type oligothiophenes in order to correlate
their relative acceptor strength with opto-electronic
and photovoltaic properties. In this respect, two novel
BDTA-capped oligothiopheneswere synthesized and characterized
by optical and electrochemical measurements.
They showed broad absorptions in the visible spectrum
and HOMO-LUMO energies well suited for organic solar
cells. The attachment of terminal BTDA acceptor units
to the conjugated oligothiophene backbone resulted in a
hypsochromic shift in UV-Vis absorption and larger band
gap in comparison to previously reported analogous dicyanovinylene
(DCV)-substituted oligothiophenes indicating
that BDTA is a weaker acceptor than DCV. Vacuumprocessed
m-i-p (metal-intrinsic-p-doped)-type bilayer solar
cells using these co-oligomers as donor and C60 as
acceptor gave moderate power conversion efficiencies of
around 1.0%. Bulk-heterojunction (BHJ) solar cells prepared
by solution-processing using fullerene PC61BM as
acceptor generated slightly lower efficiencies of 0.9%,
whichwere increased to 1.5% by using the higher fullerene
PC71BM. It was found that the cell efficiencies were mostly
limited by the low photocurrent densities due to moderate
light absorption in the bilayer devices and low fill factors
coming from inefficient charge transport in the solutionprocessed
BHJ devices.

• Publisher: De Gruyter Open
• Journal: Organic Photonics and Photovoltaics
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 2
• Issue: 1

Dates

received

1 - 4 - 2014

online

20 - 10 - 2014

accepted

21 - 5 - 2014

Contributors

author

Simon Steinberger

• Institut für Organische Chemie und Neue Materialien, Universität Ulm, Albert-Einstein-Allee 11, 89081 Ulm, Germany

author

Amaresh Mishra

• Institut für Organische Chemie und Neue Materialien, Universität Ulm, Albert-Einstein-Allee 11, 89081 Ulm, Germany

author

Gisela Schulz

• Institut für Organische Chemie und Neue Materialien, Universität Ulm, Albert-Einstein-Allee 11, 89081 Ulm, Germany

author

Christian Uhrich

• Heliatek GmbH, Treidlerstrasse 3, 01139 Dresden, Germany

author

Martin Pfeiffer

• Heliatek GmbH, Treidlerstrasse 3, 01139 Dresden, Germany

author

Peter Bäuerle

• Institut für Organische Chemie und Neue Materialien, Universität Ulm, Albert-Einstein-Allee 11, 89081 Ulm, Germany

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Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/oph-2014-0005