Theoretical investigations about the effect of electron-withdrawing groups on proprieties of A-π-D-π-A type small molecules donor for organic solar cells.

Taking the reporting donor SM0 as reference, three new A-π-D-π-A type small molecules donors (SM1, SM2, and SM3) were designed via replacing acceptor moieties. The molecular proprieties affecting the cell performance, such as, frontier molecular orbital, open circuit voltage (Voc), absorption spectrum, vertical and adiabatic ionization potential, vertical and adiabatic electronic affinity, and energy driving force ΔEL-L were investigated through the density functional theory (DFT) and the time dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT). All new designed molecules exhibit reduced energy gap, show a red shift absorption band, small energy binding Eb, moderate Voc, and improve the creation of hole and electron as compared to SM0, which demonstrate that these new designed molecules could be used as a promising donors materials for organic solar cell. Additionally, the three new designed molecules present a larger amount charge transfer qCT, a longer length charge transfer DCT than SM0 and have a smaller reorganization energy of hole λ(h) which improve the charge carrier mobilities.