Chlorinated Benzo[1,2‐b:4,5‐c′]dithiophene‐4,8‐dione Polymer Donor: A Small Atom Makes a Big Difference

Abstract

Abstract The position of a chlorine atom in a charge carrier of polymer solar cells (PSCs) is important to boost their photovoltaic performance. Herein, two chlorinated D‐A conjugated polymers PBBD‐Cl‐α and PBBD‐Cl‐β are synthesized based on two new building blocks (TTO‐Cl‐α and TTO‐Cl‐β) respectively by introducing the chlorine atom into α or β position of the upper thiophene of the highly electron‐deficient benzo[1,2‐b:4,5‐c′]dithiophene‐4,8‐dione moiety. Single‐crystal analysis demonstrates that the chlorine‐free TTO shows a π‐π stacking distance (dπ‐π) of 3.55 Å. When H atom at the α position of thiophene of TTO is replaced by Cl, both π‐π stacking distance (dπ‐π = 3.48 Å) and Cl···S distance (dCl‐S = 4.4 Å) are simultaneously reduced for TTO‐Cl‐α compared with TTO. TTO‐Cl‐β then showed the Cl···S non‐covalent interaction can further shorten the intermolecular π‐π stacking separation to 3.23 Å, much smaller than that of TTO‐Cl‐α and TTO. After blending with BTP‐eC9, PBBD‐Cl‐β:BTP‐eC9‐based PSCs achieved an outstanding power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 16.20%, much higher than PBBD:BTP‐eC9 (10.06%) and PBBD‐Cl‐α:BTP‐eC9 (13.35%) based devices. These results provide an effective strategy for design and synthesis of highly efficient donor polymers by precise positioning of the chlorine substitution.

Keywords

• benzo[1,2‐b:4,5‐c']dithiophene‐4,8‐dione
• chlorinated donors
• chlorination
• polymer solar cells