Bowl-Shaped Naphthalimide-Annulated Corannulene as Nonfullerene Acceptor in Organic Solar Cells

Abstract

An electron-poor bowl-shaped naphthalimide-annulated corannulene with branched alkyl residues in the imide position was synthesized by a palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling annulation sequence. This dipolar compound exhibits strong absorption in the visible range along with a low-lying LUMO level at –3.85 eV, enabling n-type charge transport in organic thin-film transistors. Furthermore, we processed inverted bulk-heterojunction solar cells in combination with the two donor polymers PCE–10 and PM6 to achieve open-circuit voltages up to 1.04 V. By using a blend of the self-assembled naphthalimide-annulated corannulene and PCE–10, we were able to obtain a power conversion efficiency of up to 2.1%, which is to the best of our knowledge the highest reported value for a corannulene-based organic solar cell to date.

Key words

corannulene - curved π-systems - bulk-heterojunction solar cells - nonfullerene acceptors - aggregation

Supporting Information

Supporting information for this article is available online at http://doi.org/10.1055/s-0040-1714283.

^‡ Kaan Menekse and Rebecca Renner contributed equally to this work.

Publication History

Received: 25 May 2020

Accepted: 12 June 2020

Article published online:
09 September 2020

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