Isoindigo Based Small Molecules for High-Performance Solution-Processed Organic Photovoltaic Devices

Solution processed organic photovoltaic devices have relatively less attention compared to polymer photovoltaic devices even though they have high possibility to be developed because they have both advantages of polymer and organic, such as solution processable, no synthetic batch dependence of photovoltaic performance, high purity and high charge carrier mobility as well as relatively high efficiency (~7%). In addition, solution processed organic photovoltaic devices have an advantage of easiness to study the relationship between the molecular structure and photovoltaic performance due to its simple structure. In this work, five isoindigo based low band gap donor-acceptor-donor (D-A-D) small molecules with different electron donating strength were synthesized for investigating the relationship between the molecular structure and photovoltaic performance, especially, investigating the effects of different electron donating effect of donor group in isoindigo backbone to photovoltaic device performance. The variation of electron donating strength of donor group strongly affected the optical, thermal, electrochemical and photovoltaic device performances of isoindigo organic materials. The highest power conversion efficiency of ~3.2% was realized in bulk heterojuction photovoltaic device consisted of the ID3T as donor and PC70BM as acceptor. This work demonstrates the great potential of isoindigo moieties as electron deficient units as well as guideline for synthesis of donor-acceptor-donor (D-A-D) small molecules for realizing highly efficient solution processed organic photovoltaic devices.