Tailorable PC71 BM Isomers: Using the Most Prevalent Electron Acceptor to Obtain High-Performance Polymer Solar Cells.

Despite being widely used as electron acceptor in polymer solar cells, commercially available PC71 BM (phenyl-C71 -butyric acid methyl ester) usually has a "random" composition of mixed regioisomers or stereoisomers. Here PC71 BM has been isolated into three typical isomers, α-, β1 - and β2 -PC71 BM, to establish the isomer-dependent photovoltaic performance on changing the ternary composition of α-, β1 - and β2 -PC71 BM. Mixing the isomers in a ratio of α/β1 /β2 =8:1:1 resulted in the best power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 7.67 % for the polymer solar cells with PTB7:PC71 BM as photoactive layer (PTB7=poly[[4,8-bis[(2-ethylhexyl)oxy]benzo[1,2-b:4,5-b']dithiophene-2,6-diyl][3-fluoro-2-[(2-ethylhexyl)carbonyl]thieno[3,4-b]thiophenediyl]]). The three typical PC71 BM isomers, even though sharing similar LUMO energy levels and light absorption, render starkly different photovoltaic performances with average-performing PCE of 1.28-7.44 % due to diverse self-aggregation of individual or mixed PC71 BM isomers in the otherwise same polymer solar cells.