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Naphthobispyrazine bisimide-based semiconducting polymers as electron acceptors for all-polymer photovoltaic cells

Polymer Journal volume 55, pages 443–450 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

In this work, we investigated the feasibility of using strongly electron-deficient naphthobispyrazine bisimide (NPI) as a building unit for n-type semiconducting polymers used in organic photovoltaics. We synthesized new n-type semiconducting polymers based on NPI, in which thienothiophene and thiophene were used as counits. The polymers exhibited deep lowest unoccupied molecular orbital energy levels of ~−3.7 eV and narrow optical bandgaps of less than 1.5 eV, which originated from the high electron deficiency of NPI. We found that decreasing the counit length improved the solubilities and reduced the crystallinities of the NPI-based polymers. When blended with the benchmark p-type polymer PTB7-Th, the NPI-based polymers afforded power conversion efficiencies of up to 1.6% and exhibited clear photoresponses at the absorption band of NPI-based polymers. This study shows that NPI-based polymers have good potential as n-type materials for use in organic photovoltaic cells.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by KAKENHI from JSPS (JP22K14745) and the MIRAI Program from JST (grant no. JPMJMI20E2). This work was partly supported by Next Generation Photovoltaics at Hiroshima University (the Program for Promoting the Enhancement of Research Universities from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan). 2D-GIXD experiments were performed at BL46XU of SPring-8 with the approval of the Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute (JASRI) (Proposal No. 2019A1765). The authors thank Dr. T. Koganezawa (JASRI) for support in 2D-GIXD measurements.

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  1. Applied Chemistry Program, Graduate School of Advanced Science and Engineering, Hiroshima University, 1-4-1 Kagamiyama, Higashi-Hiroshima, Hiroshima, 739-8527, Japan

    Kenta Okamoto, Yuka Iwasaki, Tsubasa Mikie & Itaru Osaka

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  1. Kenta Okamoto
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  2. Yuka Iwasaki
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  3. Tsubasa Mikie
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Correspondence to Tsubasa Mikie or Itaru Osaka.

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Okamoto, K., Iwasaki, Y., Mikie, T. et al. Naphthobispyrazine bisimide-based semiconducting polymers as electron acceptors for all-polymer photovoltaic cells. Polym J 55, 443–450 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41428-022-00749-2

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