A series of simple oligomer-like small molecules based on oligothiophenes for solution-processed solar cells with high efficiency.

A series of acceptor-donor-acceptor simple oligomer-like small molecules based on oligothiophenes, namely, DRCN4T-DRCN9T, were designed and synthesized. Their optical, electrical, and thermal properties and photovoltaic performances were systematically investigated. Except for DRCN4T, excellent performances were obtained for DRCN5T-DRCN9T. The devices based on DRCN5T, DRCN7T, and DRCN9T with axisymmetric chemical structures exhibit much higher short-circuit current densities than those based on DRCN6T and DRCN8T with centrosymmetric chemical structures, which is attributed to their well-developed fibrillar network with a feature size less than 20 nm. The devices based on DRCN5T/PC71BM showed a notable certified power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 10.10% under AM 1.5G irradiation (100 mW cm(-2)) using a simple solution spin-coating fabrication process. This is the highest PCE for single-junction small-molecule-based organic photovoltaics (OPVs) reported to date. DRCN5T is a rather simpler molecule compared with all of the other high-performance molecules in OPVs to date, and this might highlight its advantage in the future possible commercialization of OPVs. These results demonstrate that a fine and balanced modification/design of chemical structure can make significant performance differences and that the performance of solution-processed small-molecule-based solar cells can be comparable to or even surpass that of their polymer counterparts.