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N-type conjugated polyelectrolyte enabled by in situ self-doping during aldol condensation

Polymer Journal volume 55, pages 517–527 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Self-doped conjugated polyelectrolytes (CPEs) exhibit appealing application prospects in organic electronics, and their properties can be widely tuned via doping. Nevertheless, the development of high-performance n-type self-doped CPEs lags far behind that for mature p-doped CPEs. It is of great significance but still challenging to develop facile syntheses and doping pathways for n-type self-doped conjugated polymers. Herein, a transition metal-free aldol condensation polymerization accompanied by an in situ n-doping process was explored to prepare an n-type CPE. The obtained CPE, PIIGBDV-N, exhibited strong doping-induced polaron absorption in the near-infrared region, high conductivity and great ambient stability. Organic solar cell (OSC) devices using PIIGBDV-N as the electron transport layer (ETL) exhibited excellent photovoltaic conversion efficiency (PCE) and good ETL thickness tolerance. This study sheds light on facile and efficient syntheses and doping methods for preparing n-type conjugated polymers with promise for application in organic electronics.

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Acknowledgements

The work was financially supported by the Basic and Applied Basic Research Major Program of Guangdong Province (No. 2019B030302007), the Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (No. 2019A1515011259), Guangdong Provincial Natural Science Foundation-Yueshen Joint Funding (Youth Project) (No. 2019A1515110464), Shenzhen Science and Technology Commission-free exploration/general project (No. JCYJ20190812151209348) and the Distinguished Young Scientists Program of Guangdong Province (No. 2019B151502021).

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  1. These authors contributed equally: Haoran Tang, Yuejia Dou

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Polymer Optoelectronic Materials and Devices, State Key Laboratory of Luminescent Materials and Devices, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510640, P. R. China

    Haoran Tang, Yuejia Dou, Ruoxi Tan, Zirun Chen, Chunchen Liu, Kai Zhang, Jie Zhang, Fei Huang & Yong Cao

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Tang, H., Dou, Y., Tan, R. et al. N-type conjugated polyelectrolyte enabled by in situ self-doping during aldol condensation. Polym J 55, 517–527 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41428-022-00722-z

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