Synthetic control of structural order in N-alkylthieno[3,4-c]pyrrole-4,6-dione-based polymers for efficient solar cells.

The correlation between the nature of alkyl substituents on N-alkylthieno[3,4-c]pyrrole-4,6-dione (TPD)-based polymers and solar cell device performance has been investigated. After adjusting device parameters, these TPD-based polymers used with PC(61)BM provided photovoltaic responses ranging from 4.0% to 6.8%, depending on the size and shape of the alkyl solubilizing groups. Further, we have correlated the effect of the alkyl groups on the structural order and orientation of the polymer backbone using grazing incidence X-ray scattering analysis, and we have demonstrated how fine-tuning of these parameters can improve the power conversion efficiency.