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Research Article

The impact of fluorination on both donor polymer and non-fullerene acceptor: The more fluorine, the merrier

Nicole Bauer1Qianqian Zhang1Jeromy James Rech1Shuixing Dai2Zhengxing Peng3Harald Ade3Jiayu Wang2Xiaowei Zhan2Wei You1( )
Department of ChemistryUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel HillChapel HillNorth Carolina27599USA
Department of Materials Science and EngineeringCollege of EngineeringKey Laboratory of Polymer Chemistry and Physics of Ministry EducationPeking UniversityBeijing100871China
Department of Physics and ORaCELNorth Carolina State UniversityRaleighNorth Carolina27695USA
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Abstract

Fluorination of the donor polymer or non-fullerene acceptor (NFA) in an organic photovoltaic device is an effective method to improve device efficiency. Although there have been many studies on donor polymer fluorination, blends containing both a fluorinated donor and fluorinated NFA have rarely been reported. In this study, we use two donor polymers (4′-FT-HTAZ and 4′-FT-FTAZ) and two NFAs (ITIC-Th and ITIC-Th1) with different amounts of fluorine (from 2F to 6F) to investigate how the degree of fluorination in a blend impacts device performance. We find that fluorinating the NFA leads to a higher short-circuit current density (Jsc) and fill factor (FF), however, the open-circuit voltage (Voc) is decreased due to a depressed lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) level. Adding additional fluorine to the donor polymer does not have a large effect on the Jsc or FF, but it does lead to an improved Voc. By fluorinating the NFA and having more fluorine on the donor polymer, we obtain both a high Jsc and Voc simultaneously, leading to a power conversion efficiency over 10% in the case of 4′-FT-FTAZ: ITIC-Th1, which has the most amount of fluorine (6F).

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Nano Research
Pages 2400-2405
Cite this article:
Bauer N, Zhang Q, Rech JJ, et al. The impact of fluorination on both donor polymer and non-fullerene acceptor: The more fluorine, the merrier. Nano Research, 2019, 12(9): 2400-2405. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-019-2362-3
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Received: 29 December 2018
Revised: 24 February 2019
Accepted: 25 February 2019
Published: 26 March 2019
© Tsinghua University Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019
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